‘Let Each Man Carry on with His Trade and Remain Silent’: Middle-Class Ideology in the Urban Literature of the Late Medieval Low Countries

ABSTRACT:
The vernacular literary output of the ‘chambers of rhetoric’ in the Low Countries provides us with some insight into the ideology of the urban medieval middling classes. This literature included criticisms of social order, and it is argued here that whilst these come from an inherited religious discourse of reform, they can nonetheless be read as speaking to a political ideology particular to the urban context of the late Middle Ages. This article seeks to bring these ideological expressions into view, to contribute to our understanding of the political practices and popular uprisings of this time and place.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jan Dumolyn, Department of History, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, B 9000 Ghent, Belgium;, Email:
Jelle Haemers, Department of History, University of Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, B 3000 Leuven, Belgium;, Email: jelle.haemers@arts.kuleuven.be

SOURCE:
‘Let Each Man Carry on with His Trade and Remain Silent’: Middle-Class Ideology in the Urban Literature of the Late Medieval Low Countries
By Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers
In: Cultural and Social History, Volume 10, Number 2, June 2013 , pp. 169-189 (21). Publication date: 2013-06-01
Publisher: Bloomsbury Journals (formerly Berg Journals)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org.ep.fjernadgang.kb.dk/10.2752/147800413X13591373275169