European Medieval and Early Modern Cultural History 101: Introduction to Cultural History

Foreword

Cultural history as an interdisciplinary field approaches the past by incorporating methodologies from across the social sciences spectrum. Anthropology, ethnography, literary theory, discourse analysis, psychology, sociology, and other humanities offer their insights to achieve a deeper understanding of the sometimes esoteric categories of culture. The second half of the 20th century marked an impactful shift in perspective and paradigm. The role of power dynamics between different social groups became the essential segment of interpreting culture, tradition, and history. Unlike its older sister, political/official history, preoccupied with chronicling the stories of the elites and their military endeavours, cultural history is concerned with the attempt at the inclusion of all social layers. 

Staring at the past is almost like gazing at the vastness of the Universe. Most of the voices of those who lived have been lost forever, so scholars have limited assets to “add” them to history. They explore epochal art and literature, linguistic changes, myths, fairy tales, and even interviews by the Inquisition, to capture a glimpse of the mental structures, emotions, and inner lived experience of the bygone eras’ majority. Cultural history is nothing more than retrospective ethnography (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 52), an attempt to observe the past with the ethnographer’s eye. 

This course focuses on European medieval cultural history as a part of Cultural studies, but can also be studied as a part of history and ethnography. It unravels the beliefs and mentalities of the medieval people, as well as the developments of ideas, concepts, and unique experiences characteristic of the times. It unearths a type of “history from beneath” (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 52), painting a picture of, perhaps, a completely different Middle Ages. 

The series contains the following six chapters:

1. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Introduction to Cultural History

2. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Medieval Imagination

3. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: The Body in the Middle Ages

4. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Medieval and Early Modern Magic

5. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Private Living Concept

6. European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Medieval Games and Culture
   

European Cultural History of the Middle Ages 101: Introduction to Cultural History

Figure 1: "The Taming of the Tarasque" (Poyer, ca. 1500).

The second half of the 20th century represented a twist within the humanities and social sciences. Numerous theories and approaches revolutionized the way society was studied and discussed. Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced structuralism, which, applied to the study of mythology and ritual, paved the way for authors like Joseph Campbell and popularised the idea that social phenomena, like the belief system and storytelling, hide a structural formula underneath the variations that can be tracked across cultures, and reveal a deeper understanding of the universal elements of human beliefs (Hrvatska enciklopedija, 2013-2024). 

Structuralism was closely followed by deconstruction, a school of thought that took the concept a step further. Instead of simply identifying similarities and unifying elements, deconstructionists proposed dismantling the overall cultural system and rebuilding it. Their central thesis emphasized that meaning was not stable and languages revealed a gap between the signifier and the signified (Hrvatska enciklopedija, 2013-2024). As a consequence, the power relations and dynamics at the core of cultural creation turned into an essential issue in humanities, followed by the discussion about what gets to be branded as culturally important and worth memorizing for posterity. Naturally, the movements of the time like anti-racism and feminism played a pivotal role in the process, moving the spotlight to historically overlooked groups. 

Culture became the new focus. However, the way it was discussed and understood has transformed forever. Phrases like "culture of fear," "culture of poverty," etc. entered the public discourse (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 12). It came to be viewed as a way of life, a cluster of beliefs, rituals, and habits specific to a community. However, this shift posed challenges in the effort to clarify what culture is. The humanities had no choice but to move the initial focus from the object of study, the esoteric culture that was once taken for granted, to the methods (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 11). The following paragraphs explore the methodology within the social sciences, particularly concerning interdisciplinarity as a novel strategy and a point of communication between disciplines. 

Figure 2: "Christine Pisan and her dog" (Unknown, n.d.).

The Importance of Being Interdisciplinary

Interdisciplinarity is the focal approach within both cultural history and cultural studies in general. The meaning of the term is hidden in the name itself. It is a combination of methodologies, theories, and tools from different social sciences that are employed to achieve a more profound understanding of the otherwise ambiguous meaning of society and particularly culture. Interdisciplinary studies struggled for acceptance at universities for numerous reasons, one of them being difficult categorization, or the tendency of the departments to stick the name "interdisciplinary" to every course that failed to be neatly categorized under a specific discipline (Newell & Green, 1982, p. 24).

In the 1980s, interdisciplinarity became mostly associated with Cultural studies, which readily borrowed from literary theory, discourse analysis, linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, and ethnography to encompass cultural phenomena and dissect the complexities of social reality construction, that are crucial for new cultural history.  

Culture vs Civilization: The Colonial Roots of Anthropology

The postmodern period was a critical point of self-awareness for both history and anthropology as the latter was faced with its dark roots in colonialism. Many early anthropological studies were ethnocentric and followed a flawed attitude of the civilization-barbarism binary opposition, in favour of the Western and white cultures. Amongst many changes, the concept of cultural relativism emerged as relevant. Contrary to the sometimes misrepresented idea that it justifies everything if it is “cultural,” the term refers to evaluating a culture from its unique context and point of view rather than judging it by another culture’s standards (Cherry, 2023, p. 1).

Figure 3: "A Friendly Power in Egypt" (Horsley, 1906).

One of the stars in social sciences of the time was Clifford Geertz, the founder of symbolic and interpretative anthropology as well as the term "thick description." The definition of the latter, in his direct words, is "the detailed account of field experiences in which the researcher makes explicit the patterns of cultural and social relationships and puts them in context" (Geertz, 1973, p. 6). Before Geertz, anthropologists heavily relied on mere observation. They derived their conclusions not taking into account the observed culture but rather the values of their own, which is today known as ethnocentrism. The methodology and focus of cultural history were soon to become indistinguishable from ethnography, providing a radically different perspective on the study of the past. 

It is worth noting that some of the sources used were surprising if not shocking. Carlo Ginzburg’s The Worms and Cheese was a fascinating study of the inner world of a 16th-century miller, who was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition (Ginzburg 1976/1989). Perhaps it is a morbid irony that their documentation of his inquest is the only reason his voice was preserved for posterity.

Cultural History and Its Evolution

Alongside anthropology, history was also not spared from painful self-doubt. The stronger awareness of the role of power in historical attitudes and perspectives painted the official history as the narrative of the elite minority and the chronicle of military endeavours. The voiceless majority who left little to no trail entered the spotlight of historical interest and forced scholars to join efforts with other disciplines to transform the study of society. 

Figure 4: Andre Malraux and his Imaginary Museum (Jarnoux, n.d.).

The idea of cultural history, however, is much older than the times that made it the centre of attention. The term appeared in the late 18th century as Kulturgeschichte (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 17). During the 19th century, the term "civilization" was more and more likely to be replaced by "culture," which was obvious from popular 19th-century titles like E. Tylor’s Primitive Culture or M. Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. This period in the annals of cultural history is usually referred to as "The Grand Tradition." The initial stage of the field’s evolution was followed by the so-called classical phase or the portrait of the time. The most well-known author of this period is Johan Huizinga and the general idea is to try and capture the Zeitgeist of an "epoche." This problematic term received a lot of criticism from the later generations of cultural historians but more on that later (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 18-20).

The social history of art was the preoccupation of the 1930s authors, mostly because artwork was the usual source. For instance, in his capital work, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Johan Huizinga studied late medieval works of art to establish the epoch's attitude towards the concept of beauty, however, focusing only on selected sources and ignoring the Black Death’s influence (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 21-24).

The 1960s introduced a bombastic shift by erasing the line between high-brow and low-brow culture and highlighting the struggles between classes, races, genders, or other categories that represented a minority, through influence over what is or is not culturally relevant. Therefore, the ‘60s preferred to use the term "popular culture" to emphasize the masses as their major zone of interest and differentiate themselves from a more elitist approach to cultural relevance (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 37-40).

Figure 5: Stuart Hall (McCabe, n.d.).

Finally, the ‘80s brought the birth of Cultural studies, organized around the Birmingham School, founded by Stuart Hall, Richard Johnson and Richard Hoggart. Their focus was the popular culture of the day, with special attention to the concept of hegemony. The term is associated with Antonio Gramsci, who argued that dominance over a community was not only achieved by force but also by a partial agreement to the status quo by the population itself. Cultural studies are interested in how hegemony is both achieved and negotiated in society, with a focus on power—a concept traditionally neglected in the study of culture (Ramos, 1982).

The Death of the Grand Narratives

The social context of modern cultural history was characterized by the postmodern death of the Grand Narratives (Lyotard, 1979) or the failure of the Enlightenment. The ideologies of the modern world, Renaissance onwards, religion, nation, and progress turned to disillusionment after the two World Wars and created fertile soil for individuals with a more critical attitude and lesser faith towards authorities. Also, human rights movements vocalized and empowered many groups whose stories have spent centuries in silence, further shattering the myth of a homogenous culture and a pure, monolith tradition, which popularised the usage of the word culture in the plural. Understanding this environment is vital to defining the new cultural history and its focus. Concretely, when it comes to history, this attitude includes the necessary doubt in the idea of linear historical progress. To put it bluntly, history is no longer viewed as a line from a more primitive to a more advanced world as was previously believed. Cultural history abolishes the mythical point of progress, just like it erases the arbitrary borders between important and irrelevant layers of past societies.

The Criticism of Cultural History

In the late 19th century, Burckhardt stated that the history of culture was an empty concept (Burckhardt, 1882, cited by Burke, 2004/2006, p. 39). This poetic phrase simply meant that culture was linked to the elites, their taste, and manners rather than the overall way of life, which would be a more anthropological view of it. The twist toward anthropology, among other things, solidified the definition of culture as “customs, values and the way of life” rather than just the works of art, manners, and the privilege of the elites (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 44).

Figure 6: A musical lion (ca. 14th century).

In their attempt to capture the people of the past, cultural historians were often stuck with their own inner responses to the pale leftovers of the bygone eras, condemned to interpret the crumps of evidence as they saw fit. "Is cultural history doomed to be impressionistic?" This question was posed by Peter Burke, in his book What is Cultural History?. The answer to it cannot be provided, but one of the most prominent criticisms of cultural history remains impressionism (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 18-20).

Experience is impossible to directly transfer, particularly if it concerns people separated by centuries. Many cultural historians were accused of selective sources, an overzealous focus on one element and negligence of others; or falling into the trap of an ideal concept, like Zeitges — the portrait of a time — as if the past cultures were, somehow, homogenous and archetypal, like story characters and settings rather than real life (Burke, 2004/2006). The temporal distance somehow moved past human experiences into the sphere of narratology rather than something modern people see as ever being real. In a similar manner as political history assumed linear progress and point, cultural history had issues differentiating between what happened and how a specific scholar reacted to studied material. As a potential solution, the critics suggested a quantification and diversification of the sources. Still, the blindspots of cultural history remain unsolved to this day. 

Influential Theories and The New Paradigm

The so-called New Paradigm originated in Lynn Hunt’s 1989 book New Cultural History where it was summarized as focusing more on mentalities and emotions rather than systems of thought (Burke, 2004/2006, p 61). Four major names constitute the new paradigm and encompass the quintessence of the approach. What follows will briefly explain their capital works, concepts, and influence on new cultural history (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 61-70).

Mikhail Bakhtin and Literary Polyphony

Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher and literary critic, particularly known for his philosophy of language. His extensive work served as a base for many social scientists in numerous fields, such as semiotics, anthropology, psychology, and Marxism. In his famous work Rabelais and His World, about the well-known Renaissance author, he explored the idea of polyphony in literary language. This concept of different voices creating the body of a literary text rather than just one dominant narrative, represented a huge impact on modern cultural history, by emphasizing the flaws of perceiving historical epochs as monolithic in terms of ideology, beliefs, and experiences. The absence of polyphony in dominant historical sources often encourages this perspective. Seeing a period as homogenous is not uncommon, but highly inaccurate. Similar shifts were applied to the idea of a tradition and a community. Other important Bakhtin terms linked to this work are carnivalization, rituals of desecration, and grotesque realism, all linked to Rabelais’s fascinating literary world (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 63).

Figure 7: Francois Rabelais (ca. 1530).

Hand in hand with new cultural history, also came new historicism, a literary theory originated by Stephen Greenblatt that changed the conventional view of authors. They were no longer individual geniuses whose works emerged as a strike of the Muses, but, instead a product of their times. According to new historicists, the influence of the environment over the author manifests through three categories: race, milieu, and moment (Hrvatska enciklopedija, 2013-2024). This approach influenced cultural history, framing literary works as social phenomena that can be studied as historical evidence, maybe not in an ontological sense of the word, but as an expression of lived experience. 

Norbert Elias and the Thresholds of "Civilized Society"

Norbert Elias was a German sociologist, who worked at the Frankfurt Institute, with other prominent names in social sciences, like Horkheimer and Adorno. He was a member of the famous Frankfurt School. In his work, On Process of Civilization, Elias introduced several key concepts. His disgust and confusion thresholds represent the points of exclusion from "civilized" society. Elias’ book argued that the said thresholds were significantly changed during the 17th and 18th centuries, in the direction of excluding more and more behaviour types from the believed proper society (Burke, 2004/2006, pp. 64).

Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Capital, and Habitus

The philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist Bourdieu established many theories significant for cultural history’s new paradigm. In his work Distinction. A Criticism of Social Judgement, he studied fashion, nutrition, and artistic taste. Through the term of cultural capital, he concluded that certain aspects of life, like taste, that are usually perceived as fully individual, are in reality dependent on one’s class, education, and lifestyle. He called this "habitus," which refers to deeply ingrained habits that emerge from peoples’ cultural capital and life experience, showcasing that inequality is present even if the material obstacles are removed (Bourdieu, 1967, as cited in Gillespie, 2019). For instance, a lower-class person could gain access to higher education in contemporary times. However, due to their lack of cultural capital, they would still be at a disadvantage compared to their more well-off peers. This awareness opened a discussion on the classist roots of taste as well as the invisible social inequality that cultural capital creates. 

Figure 8: Candomblé, Macumba Ritual and Jaré in Brazil (n.d.).

Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan: The Social Construction of Reality

The contentious French philosopher Michel Foucault mostly covered controversial themes like surveillance, punishment, power, and sexuality. His theories explored the connection between power and knowledge, which is evident in his famous book The Order of Discourse. He offered detailed comparisons between modern institutions like schools, jails, and psychiatry asylums and established the correlation between the construction of the individual and the inner hierarchies of said institutions. However, his greatest influence is probably on the theories of the cultural construction of reality (Burke, 2004/2006, p. 84). 

In one of his capital works, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Foucault argued that mental illness, as it is known and defined, was a product of specific social attitudes, needs, and social organizations of the 18th century, in which asylums emerged. Before, mental illness was perceived, defined, and treated differently (Foucault, 1961).

The idea of reality being socially constructed was explored in other social sciences as well. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan spoke of the agnostic space outside of the symbolic discursive order imposed on the mind by language. He called this elusive space “the real.” This primordial layer of existence was not possible to reach by human consciousness. According to Lacan, the actual reality of things, outside the bars of human languages and concepts, can never be known (Lacan, 1936, as cited in May-Hobbs, 2023).

This new, overwhelming attitude within humanities overtook everything, turning the study of society into cosmic horror. Realizing that culture was more than previously presumed, a living organism with power struggles at its core, it became obvious the field of humanities needed absolute reconstruction of their perspectives, and, naturally, their unique methodologies started to blend into each other, erasing the imposed limits and classifications. 

Figure 9: The Pleiades (Vedder, n.d.).

Theories of Influence: Feminism, Media Reception, Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Besides the cultural historians, several scholars in the broader fields of humanities carved a deep mark on the discipline with their novel insights into societal themes. One of them was media discourse-related and was authored by Stuart Hall. He was a cultural studies scholar who developed the theory of coding and encoding, in his text Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse in 1973 (Hall, 1973). The importance of this study was in the compelling conclusion that the audience creates the meaning of a text rather than passively consuming it. 

Propaganda or its attempt has always been a part of text and art production. Many anthropologists believe art developed from religious/magical rituals, and there is plenty of evidence of the elite’s control of art production and intended consumption. Still, Hall’s study showed that the relationship between the text and the consumer is not at all simple. According to him, the audience can be fully active in the creation of the consumed text, by establishing their unique social context that holds the power to fully or partially transform the intended message. Texts are far from passively consumed, they are actively understood, in different, even opposing ways, by various individuals. If this was true for late 20th-century audiences, it was natural to assume it could have also been the case for the people of the past. 

Another natural addition to the new cultural history’s paradigm was feminism. Since women have been "added to history," in a manner of speaking, due to the millennial negligence of everything women-related, the newfound focus that is more aware of the role of power dynamics between the dominant and oppressed social categories has proven to fit feminist thought as a glove. Female authors often focused on typically feminine concerns, like witches. In her book Caliban and the Witch, the sociologist Silvia Federici explored the disenchantment of the previously holy and magical body and links the control of the body, particularly women as the major factor in the process of procreation, to the rise of the modern monarchy/state and development of capitalism (Federici, 2004). The Italian ethnographer Thersilla Ghato Chanu studied the documentation of the Inquisition in the quest for the opinions, feelings, and sexual desires of medieval women accused of being witches (Chanu, 2001/2008). Carolyn Bynum touched on the complex role of food in women’s practices of piety, in her Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The new cultural approach proved lucrative for feminist authors and their areas of interest due to the focus on inclusion, power struggles, and previously neglected themes.

Figure 10: "The Love Potion" (de Morgan, 1903).

A key concept for understanding and framing cultural history is also Raymond Williams’s structure of feeling. The elusive theory of the structure of feeling is an inspiring point of view on cultural history. The term, though difficult to pinpoint, could be described as a potential of different than dominant thinking that can emerge at any point in history. In a way, this idea could be simplified as the possibility of anachronism when it comes to human thoughts and emotions. This unique way of thinking is produced in-between the official, dominant discourse of a community/time, the people’s response to those norms, and the version that enters literary and cultural texts (Williams, 1954, as cited in Falasca-Zamponi, 2020).

It is impossible to discuss the late 20th-century social sciences without touching upon structuralism, a theory in social sciences that presupposes every object of study is based on a structure, an organic whole whose elements do not possess autonomous values but can be understood through oppositional and distinctive relations between each element. Structuralism as an approach appears interdisciplinary, in linguistics, literary theory, psychology, anthropology, etc. In linguistics, the most renowned structuralist is F. de Saussure (Hrvatska enciklopedija, 2013-2024). 

In literature, structuralism inspired many analyses of myths and fairy tales. The anthropologist Levi-Strauss dissected myths into their smallest segments, called "mythemes." A mytheme refers to one point or event in the narrative. (Klaić, 1982). Levi-Strauss treated myths as a language, defining them as “functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at 'taking off' from the linguistic ground on which it keeps rolling.”

Similarly, a Russian formalist Vladimir Propp studied fairy stories, in his work Morphology of the Folktale. Propp distinguishes 31 functions in the fairy narrative including the characters, events, and inventory. By examining narrative functions and archetypes (magical helpers, tricksters, donors, etc.), Propp’s work highlights similarities in stories across different cultures (Propp, 1928/1968).

Figure 11: Beauty and the Beast (Crane, 1875).

Another grand star of the structuralist approach, Roland Barthes, studied modern art in terms of ideology and mythology. By the existence of two meanings: the literal denotative and non-literal connotative, every object is potent with ideology. However, by deconstructing the latter, one can expose the ideological underbelly of the consumer society (Barthes, 1957/1972). According to the author, myths are sets of ideas understood and accepted following the dominant ideal. Taking this into account, contemporary popular culture is just as full of mythologies as the ancient world. His book of essays, Mythologies, explores modern myths and contemporary cultural phenomena. His famous concept is also the dreaded "Death of the Author," a concept that originates from the essay of the same name. Barthes’s theory suggests the intention of the creator is irrelevant since once the text is released to the world, ownership ceases. Those who interpret and consume the text ascribe a plethora of different meanings to it that can or do not have to agree with the original authorial intent (Barthes, 1967).

The Annales School: The Story of French Cultural History of the Middle Ages

The pivotal school of thought for new cultural history was the Annales school, organized around the scholarly journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociale. It was developed with a sharp focus on social history rather than politics. Their major preoccupation was in medieval and early modern Europe. Significant names include the founders and the first generation: Lucien Febvre, Henri Hauser, Marc Bloch; and the second generation: with Georges Duby, Fernand Braudel, and Jacques LeGoffe (Burke, 2004/2006, p 14). In French cultural history, an important term is the mentalities or the perspectives of ordinary people. For instance, Marc Bloch’s Les Rois Thaumaturges, published in 1924, focused on the medieval belief that kings could cure scrofula. F. Braudel, one of the most well-known Annales authors, published an extensive study: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, in 1949.  Braudel studies the region as geographical environment with social, cultural and economic elements, employing a multidisciplinary approach. In his A History of Private Life, G. Duby discussed the creation of the concept of private space, among the late medieval higher classes. Jacques LeGoff’s The Birth of Purgatory argued that the invention of the third, liminal spiritual space is closely tied to the transformative approach to time and space that took place in the mid-Middle Ages, around the 12th and 13th centuries. Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany by Richard van Dulmen is a compelling perspective on the punishment between the Reformation period and the Enlightenment. The authors covered multiple themes, attempting to dig deeper into the past inner lives and societies they created. Despite the early preoccupation with mentalities, the recent representatives of the school are more interested in social history and cultural practices than mentalities. 

Figure 12: A snail and a knight (n.d.).

Conclusion

Cultural history has emerged organically in the 20th-century world, in a social context of fundamental transformations. Social sciences became more aware of the power hierarchies at the core of the fabric of culture, particularly as a result of the rise of the human rights movements that included feminism, anti-racism, class consciousness, etc. The realization of limitations of the previous generations, such as ethnocentrism, lack of inclusive perspective, and various biases and blind spots, led to the promise of a deeper understanding of human societies through interdisciplinarity. Cultural history was born at the crossroads of history, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. Unlike traditional, official history, it is focused on including all of the layers of society, which is an extensive endeavour, as this article aimed to show.

The majority of the information available about the past was controlled by the elites. In their quest for the lost tongues of the masses, cultural historians dug up inquisition interviews, painting motifs, folk poems, myths and fairy tales, letters, diaries, fashion, rituals, and book margin notes. Their greatest accomplishment is the creation of a different perspective on both the past and present society. 

Still, the question remains if cultural history is doomed to forever be impressionistic. The elusiveness of the themes like mental structures or inner states of the individual creates problems for cultural history in terms of evidence and confirmation rather than broadening a perspective. The discipline had many trends in different periods, from the focus on the disproved Zeitgeist to the collective mental structures of the ordinary folk. The shift will, undoubtedly, go on in various directions, but one thing is certain-the perspective of history view will never go back to its previous state. 

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