Tudor Folk Tales

Tudor Folk Tales brings together stories from sixteenth-century chapbooks, cheap print and oral traditions, alongside commentary on the society that produced them. Dave Tonge uses Tudor court records, including evidence from Norwich, to illuminate attitudes towards marriage, gender, youth, work and family authority.

The retellings feature smooth-talking tricksters, lusty knaves, rebellious young people and household disputes over who should command. Some are coarse, others comic, but their concerns are recognisable: quarrels between husbands and wives, arguments between generations, youthful mischief and the consequences of idleness or deceit. Tales such as ‘Of the Brother Who Found a Chest’ present Tudor ideas about character and fortune through lively storytelling shaped from earlier popular material.