In 'Memory in Early Modern Europe' Judith Pollmann offers an introduction to the way in which Europeans on the Continent and in the British Isles practised memory in the three centuries between 1500 and 1800. In early modern Europe the past served as a main frame of moral, political, legal, religious, and social reference for people of all walks of life. Because it mattered so much, it was also hotly contested, and subject to constant reinvention. Building both on existing studies and new primary research, the first aim of this book is to account for the omnipresence, importance, and changing uses of the past among early modern Europeans. Its second aim is to situate early modern memory more clearly in the memory studies field, and to show how relevant a better knowledge of early modern memory is to students and scholars who study the role memory practices in modern societies.
Memory in early modern Europe, 1500-1800