A01=Elaine Tierney
Author_Elaine Tierney
bonfires
Category=AKX
Category=AMX
Category=ATXP
Category=NHTB
coronations
design of urban festivals
early modern Europe
early modern London
early modern Paris
early modern urban architecture
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
festive culture
forthcoming
material culture
pageantry
politics of urban festivals
splendour
street festivals
Urban festivals
Product details
- ISBN 9781526179951
- Weight: 924g
- Dimensions: 170 x 244mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Celebrating the City takes readers behind the scenes of early modern urban festivities. Ranging from magnificent coronations to modest courtyard bonfires, it offers the first comparative, interdisciplinary study of festivals in London and Paris. Departing from existing scholarship, it draws on an exceptionally broad array of textual, visual and material sources to show that designing, making and organising were central to how festivals acquired meaning. By foregrounding the processes through which events were created, the book argues that urban festival politics cannot be understood without attention to their material worlds. Its innovative methodology—combining design history with political history—sheds new light on the formation of political publics in early modern European cities. Demonstrating how cities made festivals, and festivals helped make cities, this study significantly advances histories of festivals, political culture and urban life.
Elaine Tierney is Lecturer in the History of Design and Material Culture at the V&A Research Institute
