Free shipping on orders over $99
The Social Circulation of the Past

The Social Circulation of the Past

English Historical Culture 1500-1730

by Daniel Woolf
Hardback
Publication Date: 10/04/2003

Share This Book:

36%
OFF
RRP  $460.00

RRP means 'Recommended Retail Price' and is the price our supplier recommends to retailers that the product be offered for sale. It does not necessarily mean the product has been offered or sold at the RRP by us or anyone else.

$298.75
or 4 easy payments of $74.69 with
afterpay
This item qualifies your order for FREE DELIVERY
This book investigates the changing historical culture in England between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century. Based on a wide variety of manuscript and printed sources from local and central repositories, it focuses on the social framework within which historical knowledge was generated, modified, and preserved, rather than on historiography or historical method. Woolf begins his study by examining the
ways in which early modern people acclimatized themselves to accelerating changes in their physical, social, religious, and economic environments. A developing, if uneasy, accommodation to change went
hand in hand with shifting attitudes to the acceptability of novelty and innovation. The family was the central social unit throughout most of this time, and Woolf examines views of ancestry and heredity with a particular emphasis on the circulation of genealogical knowledge and its status relative to other forms of knowledge about the past.The third part of the book turns to the subject of antiquarianism, investigating the relationship between the many varieties of
antiquarian activitiy which focused on a visible and tangible past, and the emergence of a visual sense of history during the seventeenth century. It is argued that artefacts ranging from fossils to
funeral urns were exchanged in an 'archaeological economy' among local discoverers of antiquities, most of whom were of humble station, local gentry and clergy, and university- or London-based antiquaries. It is through the force and volume of this type of exchange, rather than the scholarly contributions of particular authors, that England became much more historically aware by the early eighteenth century.The fourth and final part takes this line of argument in a
different direction, analysing the study of recollections and memories of the past. Beginning with an examination of the place of memory in English life generally, Woolf argues that memory as a faculty
existed in tension with writing (for instance, with the emergence of a much more record-orientated local archival system). The growing quantity of published historical material had considerable impact on community memories of the past, threatening to overwhelm the latter with an emerging national 'master-narrative' of history. At the same time, local communities managed to preserve a rich variety of beliefs about their surroundings, beliefs that testify to the strength of connection betwen
oral and literate expression, and popular and elite cutltures. However, oral modes of transmission, highly attractive to early Tudor antiquaries, were regarded with suspicion by early seventeenth-century
scholars because of their vagueness and undocumentability. This scepticism was complemented by a deepening social hostility toward 'vulgar error' and the lower orders with which much of it was - not always correctly - associated. By the early eighteenth century, oral tradition was no longer a legitimate tool of the anitquary or the historian, though certain scholars began to preserve it as folklore, in which form it would be studied anew in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.In conclusion, Woolf argues that sweeping changes in the perception of the past and the understanding of its place in social life occurred during this period, producing a historical culture
which was qualitatively different from that which had existed at the end of the fifteenth century. It is against this culture that the formal historical writing of the age must be understood and it is from it that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical writing, as well as related genres such as the historical novel, would emerge.
ISBN:
9780199257782
9780199257782
Category:
British & Irish history
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
10-04-2003
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
440
Dimensions (mm):
241x161x29mm
Weight:
0.9kg

This title is in stock with our Australian supplier and should arrive at our Sydney warehouse within 2 - 3 weeks of you placing an order.

Once received into our warehouse we will despatch it to you with a Shipping Notification which includes online tracking.

Please check the estimated delivery times below for your region, for after your order is despatched from our warehouse:

ACT Metro  2 working days

NSW Metro  2 working days

NSW Rural  2 - 3 working days

NSW Remote  2 - 5 working days

NT Metro  3 - 6 working days

NT Remote  4 - 10 working days

QLD Metro  2 - 4 working days

QLD Rural  2 - 5 working days

QLD Remote  2 - 7 working days

SA Metro  2 - 5 working days

SA Rural  3 - 6 working days

SA Remote  3 - 7 working days

TAS Metro  3 - 6 working days

TAS Rural  3 - 6 working days

VIC Metro  2 - 3 working days

VIC Rural  2 - 4 working days

VIC Remote  2 - 5 working days

WA Metro  3 - 6 working days

WA Rural  4 - 8 working days

WA Remote  4 - 12 working days

Reviews

Be the first to review The Social Circulation of the Past.