The Voices of the People, 1500-1800

How did ordinary people express themselves in a period when only a minority could write their name and an even smaller minority had the right to vote? In this fascinating short course, The Voices of the People, 1500-1800, we explore the multitude of ways that men and women with little wealth or education were able to make themselves heard, despite these disadvantages.

We will look at how this worked in daily life as well as in moments of crisis such as during rebellion and civil war. Sometimes they sang about their hardships or wrote autobiographically about their experiences. More dramatically, individuals often expressed their grievances through complaints to local officials, neighbours targeted their enemies by circulating lewd rumours, and whole communities fought oppressive policies through petitions or riots. Despite cultural expectations that they should be silent, women were often publicly vocal and occasionally they presented collective complaints to the authorities. At times of revolutionary change, radical groups such as the Levellers went even further and claimed they had a right to be heard, threatening the whole political and social system.

To understand these ‘voices’, we will focus on specific examples each week, allowing you to develop a set of critical tools for examining these primary sources. We will consider:

• how to find the words of ordinary people in the archives
• how to assess their ambiguous role as ‘authors’
• how to identify their potential audiences
• how to understand their language and rhetoric.

The primary focus will be on England from the tumult of the Reformation in the sixteenth century to the radical agitation of the late eighteenth century. We will explore histories of popular politics, social relations, subjectivity and the self that are relevant across many historical periods and places. The course will provide you with a historical perspective on a question which remains pressing even today: how can disenfranchised individuals and communities make their voices heard?

Assessment is by coursework of 1000 words (20%) and a 4000-word essay (80%).