The Friends of the Abbey Museum Presents - Reasonless Rhymes and Vulgar Auditors
Join us on Saturday the 24th August at the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, as Friends of the Abbey Museum Presents another amazing Floor Talk with Dr Marcus Harmes, lecturer in Study Skills at University of Southern Queensland. This floor talk is an exciting discussion that focuses on The Prince of Wales, Proverbs and Oral Cultures in Jacobean England.
Proverbs remain current and widely used in modern spoken language, but we perhaps take them for granted and are certainly not threatened by them. This reaction is different to how people in sixteenth and seventeenth century England viewed proverbs!
Society at this time was overwhelmingly illiterate, and short, rhyming statements offered comment and instruction on many aspects of life. Proverbs could be wise or obscene, obvious or epigrammatically obscure, and for some people they were frightening precisely because in an oral rather than a literate culture, they spread so quickly and the ideas they suggested could find a wide and receptive audience.
In particular, this presentation will focus on a proverb that was circulating in London in about 1605. This proverb reads: ‘Henry the 8 pulled down abbeys and cells, but Henry the 9 shall pull down Bishops and bells’. In a few words this proverb suggested nothing less than total revolution in the politics of religion of Jacobean England. Dr Harmes will discuss the ways elites at the time feared this proverb, regarded it as seditious and attempted to punish its authors.
This talk will appeal particularly to those interested in history of religion in England, as well as those interested in the Jacobean period.
The presentation will commence at 7.30pm at the Abbey Hall: 1-63 The Abbey Place Caboolture. Tickets cost $6 for guests and $3 for Friends of the Abbey Museum. For more information or to make a booking, please call the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology on 5495 1652.
