Old, old, very old men: Nostalgia in the Early Modern Broadside Ballad

This article considers the early modern broadside ballad as a vehicle for recollection and nostalgia, in light of the mid-Tudor crisis of memory. It suggests that the broadside came to function as a memorial object, first in relation to the recently deceased and in lieu of traditional devotional practice, and subsequently as a place in which the past was remembered and then imagined. In particular, it focuses on the trope of the ghostly or extremely aged man, suggesting that this figure embodied some important conflicts of early modern memory.