Power and communication in early modern Europe

Course code: HICL099P

Tutor: Felippo de Vivo

Today the overwhelming power of the media is obvious. This course illustrates the ways in which this was true too of Europe in the period between the Reformation and the outbreak of the French Revolution, two of a number of historical movements which were strongly affected by the diffusion of print and other means of communication. We will study both the variety of these media (manuscripts, images, rumours as well as the printed word), and the ways in which the increasing organisation and development of information changed the nature of politics at both government and grassroots level. The focus is comparative, with special attention given to Italy and France, and to a lesser extent to England and Spain. The classes are arranged thematically, from propaganda to censorship, the commercialization of information, rumours and the emergence of public opinion.

Preliminary reading

BLANNING, T., The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660-1789 (Oxford: 2002).

BRIGGS A., and BURKE, P., A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge: 2000).

Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978) (Aldershot: 1994).

CHARTIER, R., The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham and London: 1991).

DARNTON, R., The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (London: 1996).

“An Early Information Society: News and the Media in 18th c. Paris”, American Historical Review (2000), pp.1-35 – or even better, see www.indiana. edu/~ahr/darnton/.

DOOLEY, B., and BARON, S., eds. The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (New York and London: 2001)

DOOLEY, B., The Social History of Skepticism. Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture (1999).

HABERMAS, J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), (Cambridge: 1992).

McKENZIE, D.F., Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London: 1986).

MELTON, J. V. H., The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: 2001).

PETERS, J. D., Speaking into the Air. A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago and London: 1999).