ROUGH MUSIC AND CHARIVARI: LETTERS BETWEEN NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS AND EDWARD THOMPSON, 1970-1972

In 1971 Natalie Zemon Davis published article entitled "The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France." A study of the carnivalesque rituals of mockery through which communities displayed disapproval of moral and social infractions, it opened a revealing window onto the festive customs through which unmarried young men publicly humiliated and regulated the sexual and marital behavior of their neighbors. It also demonstrated the transmutation of these ludic rites into vehicles for social and political protest in urban environments. A year later, a piece on the English counterpart of charivari, commonly known as rough music or the skimmington ride, appeared in the pages of Annales.Written by Edward Thompson, the leading left-wing historian and founding member of this journal, this too examined the social function of the social past. Here, Walsham reflects on the history of rough music and charivari according to the letters between Davis and Thompson.