Demographic History and English Culture
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2024-09-01
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<jats:p>In England, the period from the late Middle Ages through early modernity was bookended by demographic change. On one edge, there was the Black Death and subsequent plague pandemics, which halved the population, reshaping English society in their wake. On the other, there was the demographic transition of the mid-eighteenth century, which reduced death rates and led to modern family structures. Between these two epochal events, demographic trends shaped English customs and values, and were in turn shaped by them. The articles in this special issue draw on cutting-edge demographic research to offer new interpretations of the effects of plague, patterns of marriage, evolving forms of labor, and the morality of crime and charity, among other subjects. Together, they illustrate how quantitative studies in historical demography can shed light on key transformations in culture and society—and vice versa.</jats:p>
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Werlin, J (2024). Demographic History and English Culture. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 54(3). pp. 445–456. 10.1215/10829636-11333348 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31613.
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Julianne Werlin
I am an early modernist with two major areas of interest: sociological and demographic approaches to literary history, and poetry and poetics. I am currently working on a project entitled English Authors, 1500-1700: A Demographic History. This is a prosopographic study of approximately 600 early modern literary authors, situating them within demographic and economic trends including life expectancy, nuptiality, urbanization, and class mobility. It seeks to establish the major patterns in writers' birthplace, class background, lifespan, education, profession, and other characteristics across the period.
My work also examines connections between economic and literary history. My first book, Writing at the Origin of Capitalism (Oxford) attempted to synthesize the findings of book history and early modern English economic history to show how market centralization shaped the production and circulation of books and manuscripts. I have an ongoing interest in the intersection of book history and the economy, including price history, the market for popular and elite literature (ballads versus folios), and the relationship between class and genre.
In my scholarship and teaching on poetry and poetics, I am currently particularly interested in prosody, rhyme, and metaphor. We badly need new taxonomies of formal and stylistic elements that will allow us to draw more precise discriminations between the use of different devices. I also enjoy considering long literary histories, from the ancient world to the present, and welcome conversations with students at any level who share that interest.
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