The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521720670)

Did ordinary people in early modern England have any coherent sense of the past? Andy Wood's pioneering new book charts how popular memory generated a kind of usable past that legitimated claims to rights, space and resources. He explores the genesis of customary law in the medieval period; the politics of popular memory; local identities and traditions; gender and custom; literacy, orality and memory; landscape, space and memory; and the legacy of this cultural world for later generations. Drawing from a wealth of sources ranging from legal proceedings and parochial writings to proverbs and estate papers, he shows how custom formed a body of ideas built up generation after generation from localized patterns of cooperation and conflict. This is a unique account of the intimate connection between landscape, place and identity and of how the poorer and middling sort felt about the world around them.

Author: Andy Wood
ISBN-10: 0521720672
ISBN-13: 9780521720670
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/15/2013
Pages: 412
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.90w x 0.70d