“The best place to begin a cultural history of subcultures (although medievalists may disagree) is in mid-sixteenth-century London, with the emergence here of an “Elizabethan underworld” and the popularisation of a genre of pamphlet-writing loosely referred to as “rogue literature” devoted to chronicling of criminal types and criminal activities in and around the city. Criminal underworlds certainly existed before this time and in many other places. However, early modern London saw not only the rise of a myriad of discreet, underground criminal networks but also a proliferation of imaginative narratives about them.”
“Still they came, trampling singly or in groups along the country highways, sneaking into barns and hovels on the fringes of the towns, adapting themselves to city life to swell the ranks of the criminal classes of London…everywhere unsettling the common folk, and disturbing the conventions of an orderly regime. (Judges 1965: xv)”
“An important way of understanding subcultures is this offered here, that even as they appear disorderly to outsides they are from their own perspective “tightly organised”, their social worlds structured by rules and protocols. “
“Dionne argues that the rogue literature of the late sixteenth century played a major role in sub cultural formation, helping to “reshape the image of the hapless vagabond into the covert member of a cast criminal underground of organised guilds, complete with their own internally coherent barter economy, master-apprentice relations, secret languages and patrons” (Dionne 2004: 33)."
- Ken Gelder. 2007. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practices. Routledge
By Sarah Gill
