Le povre peuple estoit moult opprimé: elite discourses on ‘the people’ in the Burgundian Netherlands (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries)
* The author is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Ghent University. He may be contacted at jan.dumolyn{at}ugent.be
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Abstract |
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This article looks at discourses on ‘the people’, ‘the common man’ and other classifications of the subaltern social groups, produced by Jean Froissart and the Burgundian chroniclers who followed in his footsteps. In contrast to the significant political and economic dynamism attributed to the Flemish burghers in the development of the Burgundian state, these urban groups occupy only a very modest place in this chronicle tradition, while peasants are even less evident. If the lower classes are mentioned at all, it is in the most stereotyped manner. To the political elites of the Burgundian state, the common man was an unknown quantity, despised and feared, powerless to act on his own behalf. The people were considered good Christians when they suffered passively, but portrayed as evil or bestial creatures if they rebelled against authority.