Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700
Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700

Author: Adam Fox

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 0191542296

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This book explores the varied vernacular forms and rich oral traditions which were such a part of popular culture in early modern England. It focuses, in particular, upon dialect speech and proverbial wisdom, "old wives' tales" and children's lore, historical legends and local customs, scurrilous versifying and scandalous rumour-mongering. Adam Fox argues that while the spoken word provides the most vivid insight into the mental world of the majority in this semi-literate society, it was by no means untouched by written influences. Even at the beginning of the period, centuries of reciprocal infusion between complementary media had created a cultural repertoire which had long ceased to be purely oral. Thereafter, the expansion of literacy together with the proliferation of texts both in manuscript and print saw the rapid acceleration and elaboration of this process. By 1700 popular traditions and modes of expression were the product of a fundamentally literate environment to a much greater extent than has yet been appreciated.

Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science
Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science

Author: Dmitri Levitin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 695

ISBN-13: 1107105889

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A groundbreaking, revisionist account of the importance of the history of philosophy to intellectual change - scientific, philosophical and religious - in seventeenth-century England.

Radical Ideas and the Crisis of Christianity in England, 1640-1740
Radical Ideas and the Crisis of Christianity in England, 1640-1740

Author: Katherine A East

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2024-08-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1837651825

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Examines the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and the nature of that Enlightenment itself. A tribute to the work of the late Justin Champion, this volume explores the radical religious and political ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England which were at the heart of Champion's intellectual contributions. Drawing on the debates and upheavals that dominated the period from the British Civil Wars to the mid-eighteenth century, the essays in this collection interrogate the challenging relationship between politics and religion which prompted what Champion called a 'Crisis of Christianity'. Diverse perspectives on that crisis are reconstructed, encompassing the experiences of republicans and radicals, philosophers and historians, atheists and clergymen. Through these individuals, a complex discourse which defies easy categorisation is recovered, but which speaks to central discussions concerning the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and indeed the nature of that Enlightenment itself.