Public Opinion and Political Contest in Late Medieval Paris

The Parisian Bourgeois and his Community, 1400-1450

By (author) Luke Giraudet

Book cover: Public Opinion and Political Contest in Late Medieval Paris

Extent: 328 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: French Studies, Medieval Studies, Social Sciences 

Series: Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800)

Series volume number: 60

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(March 2023)

ISBN: 9782503593869

Price: $130.00

In stock

This book examines political communication in fifteenth-century Paris, revealing how the city’s inhabitants wrote about and engaged with rumour, urban ceremony and official media to assert their own stake in civic and national politics as a time of acute crisis for the French kingdom, thereby revealing the function of fluid opinion c


Public Opinion and Political Contest presents an important historiographical intervention regarding the emergence of larger political publics during the fifteenth century, analysing political interaction and public opinion in medieval Europe’s largest city through the lens of the only continuous narrative source compiled in Paris durign the early fifteenth century, the well-known Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris. Examining the most turbulent period of Paris’ history, which witnessed civil conflict and English occupation, the monograph contributes substantially to understandings of late medieval popular opinion conceptually and empircially, revealing Parisian groups bound by shared idioms and assumptions engaging with supralocal movements. Analysing contemporary interpretations of official communication, protest in public space, rumour and civic ceremony, the book represents a timely mirror to themes in flux today, problematising historical conclusions that have relegated premodern societies from considerations of the public sphere. Instead, this nuanced assessment of the Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris reveals how access to informational media and forums for discussion bound Parisians and framed widespread commentary upon political issues beyond the upper echelons of medieval society.

  • By (author) Luke Giraudet