In this boldly innovative synthesis of political history and interdisciplinary social history, Kristen B. Neuschel revises our understanding of politics in early modern Europe. Drawing on the methods of the linguist and the ethnographer, Neuschel shows that early modern nobles must, like the common people of that period, be approached as having a mentalit very different from our own. In particular, she argues that the world view of these nobles was shaped by their still largely oral culture, and that historians must take this into account if they are to understand, for example, the nobles' volatile loyalties and their close attention to seemingly trivial moments of insult and self-aggrandizement.