Popular Culture(s) - Change over time

4 important questions on Popular Culture(s) - Change over time

How did the popular cultural world of 1800 differ from that of 1500?

  • Belief in astrology, witchcraft and magic, for example, formed part of the shared culture of the sixteenth century; by 1750 such beliefs had been abandoned by the elite and the middling sort, surviving only as a strand of popular culture, especially among women.
  • Religion itself exercised a weaker hold, at least in much of the Protestant north.

What cultural shift did the spread of literacy and the huge growth in printed material bring about?

Printed ballads, chapbooks and almanacs constituted a print culture that was commercially driven, a 'mass culture' rather than one genuinely 'popular'.

Name some examples of popular literature in France.

Even in France, where most popular literature was blandly conservative, the eighteenth century saw the emergence of many 'forbidden best-sellers' - illicit pieces, either politically subversive or sexually explicit.
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What political change did print bring about?

Print helped to make possible the French Revolution - just as the popular 'culture of retribution', seen in earlier crowd violence, found new forms of expression in the violence of the Revolutionary era.

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