‘Conscientious Attention to Publick and Family Worship of God’: Religious Practice in Eighteenth-Century English Households

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 307-317
Author(s):  
W. M. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Family Worship ◽  
The Past ◽  
Devotional Life

Households were the basic units of society in England until well into the nineteenth century, providing the focus of much economic activity, as well as education and, as this essay will argue, religious and devotional life. Recent research has revealed the centrality of religious life in the home in early modern England, but the extensive research about eighteenth-century households over the past fifteen years has seldom made reference to the place and practice of religion in the domestic context. This essay, focusing on the corporate religious life of Anglican households rather than on the piety and devotions of individuals, suggests that religion remained at the heart of the home and family lives of Anglican laypeople throughout the period. It was not rediscovered by Evangelicals, nor was it a distinguishing feature of evangelical households, but was a continuing element throughout the period.

Reviews: The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective, on the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath, Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom?, Quoting Shakespeare: Form and Culture in Early Modern Drama, Early Modern Civil Discourses, ‘A moving Rhetoricke’: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England, Society and Culture in Early Modern England, the English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630–1660, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain, the French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture, Modernism, Male Friendship and the First World War, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War, Manliness and the Boy's Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855–1940McCullaghC. Behan, The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective , Routledge, 2004, pp. viii + 212, £18.99 pbBreisachE., On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath , University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. vii + 236, $16.00 pb.WilliamsL. Blakeney, Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past , Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 265, £40.SouthgateBeverley, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? Routledge, 2003, pp. xi + 211, £55, £16.99 pb.BrusterDouglas, Quoting Shakespeare: Form and Culture in Early Modern Drama , University of Nebraska Press, 2001, pp. 288, £35.50.RichardsJennifer (ed.), Early Modern Civil Discourses , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 206, $65.00.LuckyjChristina, ‘A moving Rhetoricke‘: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England , Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. viii + 198, £40.CressyDavid, Society and Culture in Early Modern England , Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate, 2003, pp. xii + 344, £57.50.McDowellNicholas, The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630–1660 , Clarendon Press, 2003, pp. x + 219, £45.BurnsWilliam E., An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727 , Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 218, £45.BergMaxine and EgerElizabeth (eds), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xii + 259, 41 plates, £55.SweetRosemary, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain , Hambledon & London, 2004, pp. xxi + 473, £25.TaylorGeorge, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805 , Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. x + 263, £45.AttridgeSteve, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 229, £45.ColeSarah, Modernism, Male Friendship and the First World War , Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 297, £40FrantzenAllen J., Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War , University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 335, £24.50.BoydKelly, Manliness and the Boy's Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855–1940 , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. x + 273, £60.

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Christopher Parker ◽  
David Watson ◽  
Alan Armstrong ◽  
Ben Lowe ◽  
Carrie Hintz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War

‘Wee be black as Hell’: Ritual, Disguise and Rebellion

Rural History ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alun Howkins ◽  
Linda Merricks
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Random Event

This essay began from a continuity, or perhaps a persistence. Working as historians and cultural critics in very different periods, early modern England and the nineteenth-century countryside, we have both been struck for some years by continuities of behaviour in situations of riot or disorder. At one level this was first pointed to in the work of E.P. Thompson and George Rude in relation to eighteenth-century riot. Both these writers argued that far from riot being a spontaneous, anarchic and random event it was nearly always structured and organised. Thompson in particular introduced, through the notion of ‘moral economy’, the idea that rioters shared ideas about ‘right’ which Were related to an earlier customary social and economic order. From a very different, but equally important perspective, we have both been profoundly influenced by the flowering of cultural studies associated with the work of Mikhail Bahktin, and cultural anthropology growing from the work of Victor Turner and Pierre Bourdieu. In these Writers we found arguments about boundaries and structures which were both erected and transgressed by rituals of various kinds. Finally, a very few historians working on riot and popular disorder have been struck by the same continuity, notably, Michael Beames in his study of Whiteboyism, and very recently, Andrew Charlesworth in the Pages of this journal. This brief essay will seek to illuminate our notion of continuity, using some of these ideas. It is offered not as a definitive piece, but rather as an interpretation of some of these materials.

The Rural ‘Middling Sort’ in Early Modern England, circa 1640–1740: Some Economic, Political and Socio-Cultural Characteristics

Rural History ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Kent
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
English Society ◽  
The Subject

A middle class ‘did not begin to discover itself (except perhaps in London) until the last three decades of the [eighteenth] century’. So wrote E. P. Thompson in the 1970s in a now-famous analysis which divided English society into patricians and plebeians, and which, along with J. H. Hexter's ‘The Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor England’, largely eliminated ‘middle class’ from the vocabulary of early modern English historians. During the past decade, however, there has been renewed focus on the middle ranks in early modern England, now commonly labelled ‘the middling sort’, and such studies explicitly or implicitly call into question Thompson's polarized portrayal of English society. A number of earlier works analyzed the middling in the countryside, particularly in the period 1540 to 1640; but recent discussions focus largely on townsmen, and most are concerned with a later period, the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Even in a volume such asThe Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England 1550–1800, a collection of essays presenting recent scholarship on the subject, the rural middling sort receive very little attention (a fact acknowledged by one of the editors). This essay will draw upon detailed evidence from several parishes to consider characteristics of the middling in the countryside during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 32

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Jewish Music ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Involvement

With its five thematic sections covering genres from cantorial to classical to klezmer, this pioneering multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the work of musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands. It opens with the musical consequences of developments in Jewish religious practice: the spread of hasidism in the eighteenth century meant that popular melodies replaced traditional cantorial music, while the greater acculturation of Jews in the nineteenth century brought with it synagogue choirs. Jewish involvement in popular culture included performances for the wider public, Yiddish songs and the Yiddish theatre, and contributions of many different sorts in the interwar years. Chapters on the classical music scene cover Jewish musical institutions, organizations, and education; individual composers and musicians; and a consideration of music and Jewish national identity. One section is devoted to the Holocaust as reflected in Jewish music, and the final section deals with the afterlife of Jewish musical creativity in Poland, particularly the resurgence of interest in klezmer music. The chapters do not attempt to define what may well be undefinable—what “Jewish music” is. Rather, they provide an original and much-needed exploration of the activities and creativity of “musicians of the Jewish faith.“

Building on the Past: Medieval and postmedieval essays in honour of Tom Beaumont James

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The Past

This engaging volume highlights the scholarship of Tom Beaumont James in advancing the study of medieval and early modern artefacts, buildings, gardens and towns. It largely focuses on the history and archaeology of central Southern England and its seventeen papers range from the early medieval period to the nineteenth century.

Re-Imagining Ireland’s Early Modern Past during the Later Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-290
Author(s):  
Nicholas Canny
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
British Rule

The Great Famine provided a stimulus to the writing of history, not least because it eroded the credibility both of British rule in Ireland, and of Irish landowners. The new interpretations can be characterized as follows. The authors of a Catholic narrative wanted the Catholic nation that had emerged from suffering to be treated as an equal with the English and Scottish nations within a shared British monarchy. Militant nationalist historians cherished memories of Catholic sufferings in the hope that these would foment popular ‘disaffection’ and further revolutionary action. Moderate Unionist historians acknowledged the unjust treatment of the Irish in the past and detailed this to encourage the present government to promote reform that would elicit loyalty. Hard-line Unionist historians also faulted past British rule. Their concern, however, was that governments had not stuck rigidly to stern measures that would have produced stability. They believed that stability might still be achieved if the present government avoided conciliation.

Playing the Past: Approaches to English Historical Drama, 1385–1600. By Benjamin Griffin. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2001; pp. xiii + 193. $70 cloth.

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-309
Author(s):  
Paulette Marty
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dramatic Structure ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
History Play

Benjamin Griffin takes an innovative approach to studying the history-play genre in early modern England. Rather than comparing history plays to their chronicle sources or interrogating their political implications, Griffin studies their relationships with other early modern English dramas, contextualizing them for “those who wish . . . to understand the history play by way of the history of plays” (xiii). He seeks to identify the genre's distinct characteristics by selecting a relatively broad spectrum of plays and examining their dramatic structure, their historical content, and their audiences' relationship to the subject matter.

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMERISM IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 549-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARA PENNELL
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches

Consumption studies have arguably transformed the study of early modern cultural history in the past three decades, with the championing of previously neglected sources, application of interdisciplinary approaches, and exploration of the mentalities of acquisition, ownership, and use. But does the accumulation of writing about consuming and consumption in this period amount to much more than the historical equivalent of window-shopping? It is argued here that greater attention to the consumers as much as the consumed, to the motivations for consuming rather than the act of consumption alone, offers a way out of the explanatory cul-de-sac reached by over-indulgence in the early modern ‘world of goods’.

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