Gossip, rumour, scandal and defamation are just some of the popular discourses examined in this collection of essays by an international group of scholars. Featuring research on a wide range of resource materials (including political literature, police reports, drama, ballads, contemporary fiction, poetry and caricatures) the volume provides an introduction to the history and sociology of dissent. Each chapter explores instances of subversion and scurrility in a particular historical context. Emphasis is placed on the political culture of early modern Britain where new relationships between the state and society were pioneered. From this base further chapters proceed to discuss manifestations of these relationships in other societies and during other periods. Subversion and Scurrility reveals that while the ways in which opposition is expressed are infinitely variable, the impulse to protest is a constant.
List of figures vii List of contributors viii Preface x Introduction: Subversion and scurrility in the politics of popular discourses 1(10) Dermot Cavanagh Tim Kirk Sins of the mouth: signs of subversion in medieval English cycle plays 11(15) Lynn Forest-Hill Skelton and scurrility 26(17) Dermot Cavanagh Rumours and risings: plebeian insurrection and the circulation of subversive discourse around 1597 43(15) Nick Cox The verse libel: popular satire in early modern England 58(16) Andrew McRae To `scourge the arse / Joves marrow so had wasted: scurrility and the subversion of sodomy 74(19) James Knowles Anticlerical slander in the English Civil War: John Whites First Century of Scandalous and Malignant Priests 93(13) James Rigney His Praeludiary Weapons: mocking Colonel Hewson before and after the Restoration 106(19) Neil Durkin Innuendo and inheritance: strategies of scurrility in medieval and Renaissance Venice 125(13) Alexander Cowan The last Austrian-Turkish war (1788-91) and public opinion in Vienna 138(19) Gerhard Ammerer Surrealist blasphemy 157(18) Malcolm Gee The policing of popular opinion in Nazi Germany 175(15) Tim Kirk Subversion and squirrility in Irvine Welshs shorter fiction 190(15) Willy Maley Index 205
Dermot Cavanagh and Tim Kirk, University of Northumbria, UK Dermot Cavanagh, Tim Kirk, Lynn Forest-Hill, Nick Cox, Andrew McRae, James Knowles, James Rigney, Neil Durkin, Alexander Cowan, Gerhard Ammerer, Malcolm Gee, Willy Maley.
