The spoken word : oral culture in Britain, 1500-1850 / edited by Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fox, Adam, 1964-

Woolf, D. R. (Daniel R.)

Series:

Politics, culture, and society in early modern Britain

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oral tradition--Great Britain--History.

Oral tradition.

Literature and folklore--Great Britain--History.

Literature and folklore.

Literature and history--Great Britain--History.

Literature and history.

Language and languages.

History.

Great Britain--Languages--History.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Social life and customs.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

x, 286 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2002.

Summary:

The early modern period was of great significance throughout Europe with respect to its gradual transition from a largely oral to a fundamentally literate society. On the one hand, the spoken word remained of the utmost importance to the dissemination of ideas, the communication of information and the transmission of the cultural repertoire. On the other hand, the proliferation of written documents of all kinds, the development of printing and the spread of popular literacy combined to transform the nature of communication. Studies previous to this have traditionally focused on individual countries or regions, and emphasised the contradictions between oral and literate culture. The essays in this collection depart from these approaches in several ways. By examining not only English, but also Scottish and Welsh oral culture, they provide the first pan-British study of the subject. The authors also emphasise the ways in which oral and literate culture continued to complement and inform each other, rather than focusing exclusively on their incompatibility, or on the 'inevitable' triumph of the written word. The chronological focus, ranging from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, with glances ahead to the twentieth, set the problem against a longer time span than most other studies, providing a link between early modern and modern oral and literate cultures. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of British History, Linguistics, Literary Studies and Folklore.

Contents:

2 Language, literacy and aspects of identity in early modern Wales / Richard Suggett, Eryn White 52

3 The pulpit and the pen: clergy, orality and print in the Scottish Gaelic world / Donald Meek 84

4 Speaking of history: conversations about the past in Restoration and eighteenth-century England / Daniel Woolf 119

5 Vagabonds and minstrels in sixteenth-century Wales / Richard Suggett 138

6 Reformed folklore? Cautionary tales and oral tradition in early modern England / Alexandra Walsham 173

7 The genealogical histories of Gaelic Scotland / Martin MacGregor 196

8 Constructing oral tradition: the origins of the concept in Enlightenment intellectual culture / Nicholas Hudson 240

9 'Things said or sung a thousand times': customary society and oral culture in rural England, 1700-1900 / Bob Bushaway 256.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0719057469

0719057477

OCLC:

51059147

Online:

Publisher description