![](https://cdn.club.be/product/9782755670417/front-medium-3127050842.jpg?w=300)
This book, first published in 1987, looks at the culture of the masses and at the political language and actions of the crowd. It examines the enduring traits of a European demotic culture that was largely non-literate, and it then goes on to show how the political outlook of the lower classes arose from the moral attitudes contained in their culture, a culture that was deeply suffused by Christianity. Unlike upper-class culture, popular culture is resistant to change and has to be studied over a long period - in this case the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Because its themes - popular social values, riot and revolt - are pervasive over both time and space, the book's geographical coverage is extensive, taking in most of western and central Europe.