Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the Middle Ages - Hardcover

9780812279481: Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the Middle Ages

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812279484 ISBN 13: 9780812279481

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985

Rites of Power provides a sweeping overview of the symbolism of power from tenth-century France to modern Britain. Approaching their topic from an eclectic range of intellectual traditions, the authors turn the study of politics, social relations, and cultural creation into a single endeavor.

The essays begin with three assumptions: that all societies are ordered and governed by "master fictions" (divine right, equality for all) which make political hierarchy appear natural; that political rhetoric includes nonverbal communication (royal portraits, statistics on crop yields); and that common rhetoric can mean different things to various segments of a culture ("states' rights" during the American Civil War).

Societies studied include France and Spain in the Middle Ages, post-Revolutionary France, the modern British monarchy, tsarist Russia, colonial Virginia, and industrial Germany. The essays were selected to provide methodological as well as historical coverage; the result is a comprehensive treatment along the cutting edge of several disciplines. This book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and art history.

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Review:

"This volume encompasses a rich world of political culture, from the Spanish kings of the Reconquest to German metal-workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . . . A welcome contribution to the interdisciplinary study of ritual, symbolism, and power."--Journal of Ritual Studies

About the Author:

Sean Wilentz is Director of the Program in American Studies, and Professor of History, at Princeton University. He is coauthor, with Paul E. Johnson, of The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in Nineteenth-Century America and, with Michael Merrill, of The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, "A Laborer," 1747-1814.

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