The politics of the public sphere in early modern England / edited by Peter Lake and Steven Pincus.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lake, Peter

Pincus, Steven C. A.

Series:

Politics, culture, and society in early modern Britain

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil society--Great Britain--History.

Civil society.

History.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1485-.

Great Britain.

Politics and government.

Great Britain--Social conditions.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

viii, 277 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press : distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2007.

Summary:

This book uses the notion of the public sphere to produce a new view of the history of England in the post-Reformation period, tracing its themes from the 1530s to the early eighteenth century. The contributors, who are all leaders in their own fields, bring a diverse range of approaches and types of material and analysis to bear on the central theme, bringing the results of some of the most innovative and exciting work in the field before the reader in accessible form. Each chapter contributes both to its own area of study and sub-period as well as to the overall argument of the book.

Approaching the central questions raised by the book in different ways, and reaching differing conclusions, the essays do not follow a single line of argument, but rather show how a series of questions and issues, organized around the topos of the public sphere, can make this period look different.

Politics, culture and religion all feature prominently in the resulting analysis, which should be of interest both to advanced undergraduate students of early modern English history and literature as well as to more advanced researchers in those and related fields.

Contents:

1 Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England / Peter Lake, Steven Pincus 1

2 The Pilgrimage of Grace and the public sphere? / Ethan H. Shagan 31

3 The politics of 'popularity' and the public sphere: the 'monarchical republic' of Elizabeth I defends itself / Peter Lake 59

4 The smiling crocodile: the earl of Essex and late Elizabethan 'popularity' / Paul Hammer 95

5 The 'public man' in late Tudor and early Stuart England / Richard Cust 116

6 The embarrassment of libels: perceptions and representations of verse libelling in early Stuart England / Alastair Bellany 144

7 Marketing a massacre: Amboyna, the East India Company and the public sphere in early Stuart England / Anthony Milton 168

8 Men, the 'public' and the 'private' in the English Revolution / Ann Hughes 191

9 The state and civil society in early modern England: capitalism, causation and Habermas's bourgeois public sphere / Steven Pincus 213

10 Matthew Smith versus the 'great men': plot talk, the public sphere and the problem of credibility in the 1690s / Rachel Weil 232

11 How rational was the later Stuart public sphere? / Mark Knights 252.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 264-267) and index.

ISBN:

9780719053177

071905317X

OCLC:

154789046