The Memory of the People
Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:15th Aug '13
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- Hardback£85.99(9780521896108)
The Memory of the People is a major study of popular memory in the early modern period.
This is a pioneering account of the intimate connection between landscape, place and identity in early modern England and of how ordinary people ordered their world. Andy Wood charts how custom and popular memory generated a usable past that legitimated claims to rights, space and resources in the present.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.
'This is a book to read slowly and to savour. It is exceptionally rich: in fresh and illuminating material; in historical imagination and insight; in conceptual sophistication and in interpretative implications. It combines breadth of vision with vivid specificity, and is written with fluency and power, from its arresting opening to its trenchant conclusion. It is a truly major work.' Keith Wrightson, Townsend Professor of History, Yale University
'The Memory of the People is a tour de force, its conceptual sophistication and empirical rigor representing social history at its very best. Based on protracted and sensitive engagement with a huge range of manuscript source material derived from the law courts (especially the equity jurisdictions of early modern England), it draws inspiration not only from historical studies of the significance of custom, but also from the work of sociologists, socio-linguists, social anthropologists and historical geographers. Andy Wood's penetrating analysis of plebeian culture will radically transform the way historians think about popular understandings of time and space in the English past.' Steve Hindle, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, Huntington Library
'A dense, thought-provoking and penetrating book that will inspire a new generation of students of early modern history.' History Today
'The study of popular perceptions of the past has taken a dramatic step forward with this splendid book.' Daniel Woolf, Renaissance Quarterly
'Beautifully, and very accessibly, written, this book deserves to be recognised as an instantaneous classic.' Rural History
- Winner of Leo Gershoy Award, American Historical Association 2014
ISBN: 9780521720670
Dimensions: 227mm x 152mm x 23mm
Weight: 600g
412 pages