The construction and representation of urban identities : public and private lives in late medieval Bury St Edmunds

This thesis relocates the individual within the processes of representation in order to compensate for the relative neglect the subject has received in recent treatments of medieval urban studies. It reassesses the behaviour of urban communities not in terms of the demographic and economic, by aligning the particular community along the growth/decline debate; but by viewing social process in terms of the interpersonal relationships of the town's inhabitants. This has been pursued by examining the construction and representation of personal and communal identity within defined urban contexts, and by suggesting a method by which these subjects might provide a useful critical tool for approaching traditional urban historical concerns from a new perspective. Sociological conceptualisations of self, person and community have been invoked to provide a vocabulary for discussing the issues involved, and methods for reconsidering approaches to evidence using a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Using Bury St Edmunds, a relatively sophisticated and somewhat distinctive urban community, an examination of the ways in which identity and self representation are enacted by its inhabitants is undertaken to establish the role of the individual within the social processes at work within urban communities. it is shown that identity can be seen as a mechanism by which communities order and regulate their participants. Specific case studies of individual identity are presented alongside a model of communal identity in the town, with the intention of situating the individual constructions of identity within the contextual discourses of identity produced by the community. The location of the individual within the communal constructions of identity enables the observation of the effects that individuals had upon their late medieval urban communities, with the result that the nature of social change can be seen to originate from the activities and perceptions of individuals, rather than communities.