The Broken Spell A Cultural and Anthropological History of Preindustrial Europe

by Pieter Spierenburg

In this textbook, Pieter Spierenburg deals with the attitudes, emotions, sensibilities, ideas, customs and practices of people. He synthesizes the work that has been done in this field, looking at pre-industrial Western Europe from the year 1000 until the beginning of the 19th century. He also compares developments in England, France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and orders them into an interpretive framework. Spierenburg highlights two central changes in pre-industrial Europe: privatization increased as human activities shifted from the public areas to private spaces, and magical beliefs retreated as more impersonal views of the cosmos came to the fore. In his chapters on the family, Spierenburg looks at family formation, the increasing importance of the nuclear family, wedding rituals, marriage patterns, the influence of Christianity on notions of love and sex, increasing restrictions on sexuality, the growth of intimacy between spouses, and the treatment of children. In his chapters on popular culture, Spierenburg writes about magical beliefs, popular customs, the campaign to "civilize" the peasantry, and the decline of community life.

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