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Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640


Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640

Paperback by Watt, Tessa

Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640

£30.99

ISBN:
9780521458276
Publication Date:
21 Oct 1993
Language:
English
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Pages:
392 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 6 - 11 May 2024
Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640

Description

This book looks at popular belief through a detailed study of the cheapest printed wares in London in the century after the Reformation. It investigates the interweaving of the printed word with the existing oral and visual culture, as well as the general growth of literacy. Both Protestantism and print have been credited by recent historians with enormous, even 'revolutionary' impact upon popular culture. The protestant hostility towards traditional recreations is said to have 'inserted a cultural wedge' in village society, while its logo-centricism took the English people across a watershed 'from a culture of orality and image to one of print culture'. This study challenges these confrontational models, showing instead how traditional piety could be gradually modified to create a religious culture which was distinctively post-Reformation, if not thoroughly 'Protestant'.

Contents

Introduction; Part I. The Broadside Ballad: 1. Small and popular music; 2. A Godly ballad to a Godly tune; 3. The 1642 Stock; Part II. The Broadside Picture: 4. Idols in the frontispiece; 5. Stories for walls; 6. Godly tables for good householders; Part III. The Chapbook: 7. The development of the chapbook trade; 8. Penny books and marketplace theology; Conclusion.

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