Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps and tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 England and its neighbours
- Map 2 England 900–1200
- I Introduction
- I.1 Land use and people
- I.2 Water and land
- I.3 Forest and upland
- I.4 Mineral resources
- I.5 Health and disease
- II.1 Authority and community
- II.2 Lordship and labour
- II.3 Order and justice
- II.4 War and violence
- II.5 Family, marriage, kinship
- II.6 Poor and powerless
- III.1 Towns and their hinterlands
- III.2 Commerce and markets
- III.3 Urban planning
- III.4 Urban populations and associations
- IV.1 Invasion and migration
- IV.2 Ethnicity and acculturation
- IV.3 Intermarriage
- IV.4 The Jews
- V.1 Religion and belief
- V.2 Rites of passage and pastoral care
- V.3 Saints and cults
- V.4 Public spectacle
- V.5 Textual communities (Latin)
- V.6 Textual communities (vernacular)
- VI.1 Learning and training
- VI.2 Information and its retrieval
- VI.3 Esoteric knowledge
- VI.4 Medical practice and theory
- VI.5 Subversion
- Glossary
- Time line 900–1200
- Further reading
- Index
V.4 - Public spectacle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps and tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 England and its neighbours
- Map 2 England 900–1200
- I Introduction
- I.1 Land use and people
- I.2 Water and land
- I.3 Forest and upland
- I.4 Mineral resources
- I.5 Health and disease
- II.1 Authority and community
- II.2 Lordship and labour
- II.3 Order and justice
- II.4 War and violence
- II.5 Family, marriage, kinship
- II.6 Poor and powerless
- III.1 Towns and their hinterlands
- III.2 Commerce and markets
- III.3 Urban planning
- III.4 Urban populations and associations
- IV.1 Invasion and migration
- IV.2 Ethnicity and acculturation
- IV.3 Intermarriage
- IV.4 The Jews
- V.1 Religion and belief
- V.2 Rites of passage and pastoral care
- V.3 Saints and cults
- V.4 Public spectacle
- V.5 Textual communities (Latin)
- V.6 Textual communities (vernacular)
- VI.1 Learning and training
- VI.2 Information and its retrieval
- VI.3 Esoteric knowledge
- VI.4 Medical practice and theory
- VI.5 Subversion
- Glossary
- Time line 900–1200
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Public spectacle, which may be defined as any orchestration of events designed to engage the minds of spectators, can inform our understanding of the social identity or prevailing mores of past cultures. Typically it evolves as a co-adapted set of devices: superficially, devices such as sights, sounds, smells, splendour and ceremony, but at a deeper level – one might say psychologically – a sense of participation; an affirmation of identity and life's meaning for the individual, as a spectator within a collectivity of his or her peers. The trick is that each spectator imagines that he or she is at one with all, most or many of the others by participating in the common response of the crowd; indeed, the most enduring forms of public spectacle in the period 900–1200 stimulated the crowd to respond in a predetermined way. In doing so they performed four main social functions. The first function of spectacle was essentially contractual: to affirm the mutual responsibilities, or the mutually profitable relationship, between different ranks of the social hierarchy (including God and the saints), or social equals. Another function was to affirm life's meaning, usually by reinforcing belief in God and in the Christian cosmology. A third function might be termed recreational. Village drama, knockabout, satire, skits and the enactment of heroic tales tackled life's big questions in engaging, allusive, fun or frivolous ways, and surely helped people come to terms with them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Social History of England, 900–1200 , pp. 321 - 329Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011