Hithergrass
Household Politics
The title of the book I have been reading is "Household Politics" by Don Herzog, published by Yale University Press in 2013.
Herzog is not a professional historian, his academic specialty is politics.
You might think that my new image is a tranquil scene of early modern England peasant domestic life. But it is actually a design for a scene in video I am creating in the Ravensway series.
Herzog tells us that the early modern household was as unruly, chaotic and occasionally violent as the world we still live in. It is still the same world. It just hasn't changed.
What evidence does he present for the politicized peasant household? Everywhere. From the layout of the thatched cottage to the objects found in it. But what I found most interesting is the cultural evidence he presents. He goes for the bottom drawer, the stuff considered unworthy. He finds out what is going on in the early modern household in jokes, "popular" entertainment (like Shakespearan plays or murderous stories), chapbooks, household manuals, sermons, proclamations, journals, letters and Jonathan Swift whose scatalogical poem never appeared in the anthologies I was assigned in my post graduate English studies.
This was the age when print became cheap enough and distributed widely enough to reach the hands and eyes of the common rural labourer. It was cheap pulp, the equivalent of the dime novel of the 50s. And today, what household do you gain entry to by watching a Hallmark Christmas romance? The movie "Pulp Fiction?" "Barbie?"
So what are my couple in the new image talking about? I think I know. I can hear them talking. I am learning to listen.
Household Politics
The title of the book I have been reading is "Household Politics" by Don Herzog, published by Yale University Press in 2013.
Herzog is not a professional historian, his academic specialty is politics.
You might think that my new image is a tranquil scene of early modern England peasant domestic life. But it is actually a design for a scene in video I am creating in the Ravensway series.
Herzog tells us that the early modern household was as unruly, chaotic and occasionally violent as the world we still live in. It is still the same world. It just hasn't changed.
What evidence does he present for the politicized peasant household? Everywhere. From the layout of the thatched cottage to the objects found in it. But what I found most interesting is the cultural evidence he presents. He goes for the bottom drawer, the stuff considered unworthy. He finds out what is going on in the early modern household in jokes, "popular" entertainment (like Shakespearan plays or murderous stories), chapbooks, household manuals, sermons, proclamations, journals, letters and Jonathan Swift whose scatalogical poem never appeared in the anthologies I was assigned in my post graduate English studies.
This was the age when print became cheap enough and distributed widely enough to reach the hands and eyes of the common rural labourer. It was cheap pulp, the equivalent of the dime novel of the 50s. And today, what household do you gain entry to by watching a Hallmark Christmas romance? The movie "Pulp Fiction?" "Barbie?"
So what are my couple in the new image talking about? I think I know. I can hear them talking. I am learning to listen.