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© The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2017In 1971 Natalie Zemon Davis published a seminal article in the pages of Past and Present, entitled ‘The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France’.1 A study of the carnivalesque rituals of mockery through which communities displayed disapproval of moral and social infractions, the essay opened a revealing window onto the festive customs through which unmarried young men publicly humiliated and regulated the sexual and marital behaviour of their neighbours. 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.2 Written by Edward Thompson, the leading left-wing historian and founding member of this journal, this too examined the social function of...

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