Cultural History of Early Modern European Streets

In urban life streets are elemental, but urban history seldom places them at centre stage. It tends to view them as mere backdrops for events or social relations, or to study them as material constructions, the fruit of urban planning, but largely vacant of inhabitants. Examining people and streets in tandem, the writers here strive towards more integrated urban history. They discuss the social and political processes of early modern street life, and the discursive play in which streets figured. Six chapters, based in Sweden-Finland, England, Portugal, Italy, and Transylvania, discuss the subtle interplay of material and immaterial, of public and private, of planned order and versatile, spontaneous invention, of control and resistance, all matters central to how streets worked. Contributors of this title include: Emese Balint, Maria Helena Barreiros, Elizabeth S. Cohen, Thomas Cohen, Alexander Cowan, Anu Korhonen, Riitta Laitinen, and Dag Lindstrom.

In urban life, streets are elemental, but urban history seldom places them centre stage. It tends to view them as mere backdrops for events or social relations, or to study them as material constructions, the fruit of urban planning, but largely vacant of inhabitants. Examining people and streets in tandem, the contributors to this volume strive towards more integrated urban history. They discuss the social and political processes of early modern street life, and the discursive play in which streets figured. Six chapters, based in Sweden-Finland, England, Portugal, Italy, and Transylvania, discuss the subtle interplay of the material and immaterial, public and private, planned order and versatility, spontaneous invention, control and resistance - all matters central to how streets worked.
Contributors are Emese Bálint, Maria Helena Barreiros, Elizabeth S. Cohen, Thomas V. Cohen, Alexander Cowan, Anu Korhonen, Riitta Laitinen, and Dag Lindström.

Cultural history of early modern streets : an introduction / Riitta Laitinen with Thomas Cohen Urban landscapes : houses, streets, and squares of 18th century Lisbon / Maria Helena Barreiros Mechanisms of the hue and cry in Kolozsvar in the second half of the sixteenth century / Emese Balint Urban order and street regulation in seventeenth-century Sweden / Riitta Laitinen and Dag Lindstrom To pray, to work, to hear, to speak : women in Roman streets, c. 1600 / Elizabeth S. Cohen Gossip and street culture in early modern Venice / Alexander Cowan To see and to be seen : beauty in the early modern London street / Anu Korhonen. In urban life streets are elemental, but urban history seldom places them at centre stage. This title discusses the social and political processes of early modern street life, and the discursive play in which streets figured. It includes six essays that explore the evolving cultural and material life of the early modern European street Six essays explore the evolving cultural and material life of the early modern European street, a contested place of shaded meanings where public met private space, and state and society vied for control of urban form.