Print and Popular Culture in Ireland, 1750–1850 (Early Modern History: Society and Culture)

This highly acclaimed book is being published for the first time in paperback. The author studies the cheap printed literature which was read in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland and the cultures of its audience. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to a little-known topic, pursuing comparisons with other regions such as Brittany and Scotland. By addressing questions such as the language shift and the unique social configuration of Ireland in this period, it adds a new dimension to the growing body of studies of popular culture in Europe. "This book looks at popular print culture in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland, and how its stories of knights and heroes, highwaymen and cattle stealers were read and understood. They were absorbed into a culture which was vibrant and diverse and O Ciosain's analysis touches on topics as varied as the origins of modern Orange ritual, the relationship between literacy, printing and languages, and Gaelic religious songs. He ends by considering the ways in which ordinary people at the time saw their world, as well as the ways in which modern scholars have described and interpreted the cultures of those people."--BOOK JACKET. "The author takes an interdisciplinary approach to a little-known area of Irish history and literature, pursuing comparisons with other regions and cultures. By addressing questions such as language shift and the unusual social configuration of Ireland in this period, it adds a new dimension to the growing body of studies of popular print in Europe."--BOOK JACKET "In 1598 a man - branded the Calabrian Charlatan by his opponents - appeared in Venice claiming to be King Sebastian, the Portuguese monarch who disappeared in battle some twenty years before. Over the next five years, the Venetians, the Spanish and the Portuguese wrangled over the true character and identity of the man. Was he a lunatic? Was he an impostor? Was he a messianic king? Eric Olsen uses this strange event to explore Portuguese millenarianism and how a group of Portuguese rebels sought to exploit it to free their nation from Spanish rule. Along the way, he analyzes broader issues in early modern European politics such as the fragility of the state, the function of exemplary justice, the influence of popular beliefs, and the role of rumor."--BOOK JACKET "The Protestant Reformation transformed the funeral more profoundly than any other ritual of the traditional Church. Luther's doctrine of salvation 'by faith alone' led to the death of Purgatory in the Protestant tradition and forced Reformers to re-establish the funeral on a new theological basis. By drawing on anthropological interpretations of death ritual, this study explores the changing relationships between the body, the soul, the living and the dead that shaped the daily encounter with death in Germany from the eve of the Reformation to the rise of Pietism, concluding with a discussion of the spread of honourable nocturnal burial at the end of the seventeenth century."--Jacket Front Matter....Pages i-ix Approaches and Methods....Pages 1-24 Literacy and Education....Pages 25-51 Production and Distribution....Pages 52-71 Chivalric Romances....Pages 72-83 Criminal Biography: Irish Highwaymen and James Freney....Pages 84-99 Time, Ritual and History: The Battle of Aughrim....Pages 100-117 The Catholic Reformation, Irish-Language Printing and Song: the Pious Miscellany....Pages 118-131 ‘Improving and Practical Literature’....Pages 132-153 Languages and Literacy....Pages 154-169 The Ideology of Status in Ireland....Pages 170-184 Popular Print and Popular Culture....Pages 185-203 Back Matter....Pages 204-249 Looks at popular print culture and how its stories of knights and heroes, highwaymen and cattle stealers were read and understood. The author's analysis touches on topics as varied as the origins of modern Orange ritual, the relationship between literacy, printing and languages, and Gaelic religious songs. He ends by considering the ways in which ordinary people at the time saw their world, as well as the ways in which modern scholars have described and interpreted their cultures. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. Niall Ó Ciosáin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 226-246) And Index.