ABSTRACT
The popular culture of early modern Europe is elusive. It eludes historians because they are literate, self-conscious moderns or postmoderns who may find it difficult to comprehend people unlike themselves and also because the evidence for the attitudes and values, hopes and fears under investigation is so fragmentary. Much of the popular culture of this period was oral culture, and ‘words fly away’. Much of it took the form of festivals, which were equally impermanent. We would like to know about performances, but what have survived are texts. We would like to see these performances through the eyes of the participants themselves, but we are forced to see them through the eyes of literate outsiders.1 It is hardly surprising that some historians have considered it impossible to discover what popular culture was like in this period. It is important to be aware of the difficulties, and so, in the section which follows, I shall play devil’s advocate and put the sceptic’s case. At the same time, I do believe that we can find out a good deal about the popular culture of this period by more or less indirect means, and so in the second section I shall try to suggest what these indirect approaches may be.
