<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> The purpose of this article is to re-examine popular culture in early-modern England by focusing on the oral/illiterate-written/literate and popular culture-high culture dyads. I aim to question why these interrelated socio-cultural categories have not been properly reconciled by the writers of the time. Moreover, my purpose is to focus on antiquarianism as a valid method whereby the delineation between the above-mentioned dichotomies turns into a subtle relationship in which both terms become complementary. I shall focus on two important antiquarian texts - Henry Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (1725) and John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777) - by considering issues of religion and national identity, in an attempt to show that popular culture made known its counter-hegemonic virtues which, though permanently negotiated, were never rejected by the polite. Ultimately, the unstable relationship between the high and the low will be seen as suggestive of the porous boundaries between the two, indicating, at the same time, popular culture’s participatory role in rethinking cultural identity in Enlightenment England.</p></abstract>

The purpose of this article is to re-examine popular culture in early-modern England by focusing on the oral/illiterate-written/literate and popular culture-high culture dyads. I aim to question why these interrelated socio-cultural categories have not been properly reconciled by the writers of the time. Moreover, my purpose is to focus on antiquarianism as a valid method whereby the delineation between the above-mentioned dichotomies turns into a subtle relationship in which both terms become complementary. I shall focus on two important antiquarian texts - Henry Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (1725) and John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777) - by considering issues of religion and national identity, in an attempt to show that popular culture made known its counter-hegemonic virtues which, though permanently negotiated, were never rejected by the polite. Ultimately, the unstable relationship between the high and the low will be seen as suggestive of the porous boundaries between the two, indicating, at the same time, popular culture’s participatory role in rethinking cultural identity in Enlightenment England.

The Counter-Hegemonic Virtues of Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century England

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"The Counter-Hegemonic Virtues of Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century England"}

The purpose of this article is to re-examine popular culture in early-modern England by focusing on the oral/illiterate-written/literate and popular...

The Counter-Hegemonic Virtues of Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century England

Published Online: Feb 12, 2016

Page range: 10 - 19

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2015-0005

© ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.