[Artemisia] An Odd query for the True History Wonks

[Bruce Padget]

>> I realize the risk in trying to plot a trend from
>> three samples, but I 
>can't help thinking that
>> Something caused this movement from bupkis to
riches
>> within 25 years.
>> 
>> Some speculations of mine so far:
>> Some change in the publishing business?
>> (Technological?  Legal regulation? New business
>> models?)
>
>First English printing press: 1476.  The first books
>that Caxton published were scripture followed by the 
>classics of antiquity. The established English middle
>class bought everything that Caxton and his
competition
>printed. An affluent middle class, the market for
books,
>and the economy of scale fostered by the spread of 
>both printing and papermaking technologies all
pre-date
>the books you cite by ~200 years. Remember: Caxton
and
>Sire Thomas Morley are contemporaries.
>
>> An intellectual paradigm shift toward encyclopedic
>> descriptive folk life research?
>
>Now there's 
>a modern thought!  Remember, the past is
>a foreign country (and the title of a really good
book
>by David Lowenthal on the Philosophy of History).
Neither 
>Hobbes nor Locke nor any of their educated
contemporaries 
>would have even thought of compiling folk traditions,

>even for an "encyclopedia."  Pliny the Elder was
still 
>the standard work for that, even in the 17th C. 

Tho, at least in dance, you do see a move from
prescription to description.
 Earlier Italian manuals are all about, "here's the
right way to dance!"
_Orchesographie_ (1589) likewise, except Arbeau
occasionally notes
(with clear disapproval) that young bucks will do
certain variants.  If
the received history can be believed (one big "if"
that adds much fun to
our hobby, IMHO :D), for _The English Dancing Master_
Playford sent collectors
around the country to simply watch what the people
were dancing and write down
what they saw.  There is some scholarship indicating
that Willughby took
the same kind of descriptive approach in the _Volume
of Plaies_, tho I've
yet to even scratch the surface on this.

>> A result of the Commonwealth and its demise? 
(Maybe
>> feeling an urgent need to preserve traditions when
the
>> mortality of those traditions was realized?)
>
>I will suffer the ignobility of repeating myself to
say 
>no, preservation of anything (other than foodstuffs)
is 
>just not something a 17th C. person would do. By the
17th 
>C., not even religious stuff qualifies as being
worthy 
>of preservation, especially with anabaptists,
puritans 
>and levelers running about.
>
>At least two of the articles in a collection of
essays 
>that I own on Stuart England support the view that
the 
>Restoration is responsible for "sudden explosion" of 
>"how-to" books on leisure activities. The
"Restoration" 
>created a climate of party-going and a demand for
instruction 
>on the leisure activities for the merchant princes
and idle
>nobility. The active pleasure of leisure activities
could
>easily be the zeitgeist of the Restoration period
after
>the somberness of the Civil War and Commonwealth (p.
182,
>"Minds and Manners" by Graham Parry, in: B. Worden
(Ed.)
>_Stuart England_, Phaidon Press, Oxford, pp. 176-198)

So (reading between the lines), the "explosion" I
thought I was seeing did
happen, but limited to leisure arts?  Do you know
offhand if _Stuart England_ is still in print? 
(Searching for books on the road is a pain
in the tuchus.)

>I think this point illustrates, more than any other,
the 
>difficulty of taking re-creation beyond dressing-up
in period
>clothes and crafting period things. Unfortunately,
the attempt
>to understand an historical mindset requires a level
of 
>research that most of us lack the time to pursue.

Difficult, yes.  But worth the attempt in order to
live "living history," no? :D

>> Thoughts?  Do trends with cookbooks or in other
areas
>> shed light?
>
>The publishing explosion of "leisure arts" books in
also 
>seen in cookbooks during the Stuart Restoration (p.
263, 
>"The English at Home," by Peter Earle, in: B. Worden
(Ed.)
>_Stuart England_, Phaidon Press, Oxford, pp.
242-263).
>
>(Yes, Mistress Crispy-Anne, it is a secondary source,
but
>it's a good one).
>
>ttfn
>Therasia

My thanks, Mistress

Niccolo
Abbastanza Buon Non E Abbastanza Buono
bapadget at yahoo.com

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