Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

'Rime and reason': the political world of the English broadside ballad, 1640-1689

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

McShane Jones, Angela (2004) 'Rime and reason': the political world of the English broadside ballad, 1640-1689. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

[img] PDF
WRAP_THESIS_McShaneJones_2004.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (31Mb)
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1782689~S9

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

This thesis explores political broadside balladry in England in the period from c.1640 to the Glorious Revolution, and argues that it was a medium by which the political ideals of Christian humanism were transmitted to a socially and geographically diverse audience. The investigation is based on an analysis of all extant broadsides and titles of the period in conjunction with contemporary sources such as diaries, discourses on literature and politics, state papers and court records. No comprehensive historical study of this material across such a broad period has been done to date.

The thesis is divided into three sections: the market, the medium and the message of the broadside ballad world. These analyse the range and nature of products and consumers in the political ballad market, set out the functions of the political ballad and present the political analysis that ballads offered contemporaries as they sought to render comprehensible the political world in a period of momentous change.

The findings of the thesis are first, that the use of cheap print as a source by historians necessitates a serious engagement with the material culture, the genre and the content of print products. Second, it challenges the long-standing orthodoxy that the broadside ballad functioned primarily as a news medium and offers an accurate assessment of the ballad genre as political cultural broker between centre and periphery and a more nuanced explanation of the ballad as vehicle of choice for political debate. Third, in the light of material and generic insights and through detailed content analysis, it reveals the way in which the most traditional broadside ballads, printed for most part in black-letter, used Christian humanist ideas, based on Aristotle and the New Testament, to explain the trauma of the civil war and interregnum, to complain at the incursions into law and liberty by corrupt and radical Stuart government and to lay out the constructs and constraints of a political world which made it possible for the xenophobic English to eject an English King in 1688-9 and make a Dutch one acceptable, by dressing him in the mantle of an English Protestant hero.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Broadsides -- England -- 17th century, Street literature -- England -- 17th century, Political poetry, English -- History and criticism -- Early modern, 1500-1700, Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714, Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 17th century
Official Date: November 2004
Dates:
DateEvent
November 2004Submitted
Institution: University of Warwick
Theses Department: Department of History
Thesis Type: PhD
Publication Status: Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: Capp, B. S.
Sponsors: University College, Northampton (UCN) ; Victoria and Albert Museum. Research Dept. (V&A)
Format of File: pdf
Extent: 475 leaves
Language: eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us