ABSTRACT
The history of revolt and rebellion, including early modern revolt, has its own history, including a political history. The rise of memory studies from the 1980s onwards is one of the most dramatic trends not only in historical writing, inside and outside the university, but also in other disciplines such as sociology, literature and of course psychology. Unlike some psychologists, however, oral historians do not stop at the demonstration of the fallibility of memory. Popular culture in early modern times was full of re-employments. The idea of re-employment is related to that of re-enactment, which is related in its turn to the notion of performance. A central idea that was expressed or implied by early modern rebels is that some new events are re-enactments of older ones. Whether or not re-enactments were successful, the memories of new revolts were gradually reconstructed to fit traditional models.
