Social History as Revealed by Gesture: Changing Eighteenth-Century Styles of Meeting and Greeting
Social History as Revealed by Gesture: Changing Eighteenth-Century Styles of Meeting and Greeting
Author(s): Penelope J. CorfieldSubject(s): History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Education, Sociology, History of ideas, Social history, Modern Age, Culture and social structure , Social development, Social differentiation, Human Ecology, Environmental interactions, 18th Century, Social Norms / Social Control, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Национално издателство за образование и наука „Аз-буки“
Keywords: greetings; everyday life; hat honour; curtsey; handshake; urbanisation; commercialisation; social trends
Summary/Abstract: This essay explores the significance of changing styles of interpersonal greetings in Britain in the long eighteenth century (from 1700 to the 1850s). Everyday rituals of hat honour, when men removed their hats and women curtseyed, were increasingly undertaken in a brisker and much less elaborate manner. Yet there was also change within change. A new alternative style of greeting was emerging in the form of the handshake. The urban, social, cultural, and class contexts of such changes are analyzed, pointing to multi-directional historical trends in the intimate rituals of everyday life.
Journal: История
- Issue Year: 26/2018
- Issue No: 3
- Page Range: 231-238
- Page Count: 8
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF