Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-modern EnglandThis innovative work of historical sociology locates the origins of modern democratic discourse in the emergent culture of printing in early modern England. For David Zaret, the key to the rise of a democratic public sphere was the impact of this culture of printing on the secrecy and privilege that shrouded political decisions in seventeenth-century England. Zaret explores the unanticipated liberating effects of printing and printed communication in transforming the world of political secrecy into a culture of open discourse and eventually a politics of public opinion. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Theory and History | 18 |
THEORIES OF THE EARLY PUBLIC SPHERE | 21 |
HISTORICAL REVISIONISM | 35 |
THE PARADOX OF INNOVATION | 39 |
Secrecy and Privilege | 44 |
PRINCIPLE | 50 |
CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN SECRECY NORMS AND POLITICAL PRACTICE | 61 |
POPULAR LITERACY AND READING | 150 |
ILLICIT BOOKS | 159 |
APPEALS TO PUBLIC OPINION IN RELIGION TO 1640 | 165 |
Printing and Politics in the 1640s | 174 |
IMPOSITION OF DIALOGIC ORDER ON CONFLICT | 176 |
PRINTED NEWS | 184 |
PRINTED POLITICAL TEXTS | 197 |
INVOKING PUBLIC OPINION | 209 |
Traditional Communicative Practice | 68 |
CENTER TO PERIPHERY | 69 |
PERIPHERY TO CENTER | 75 |
GRIEVANCES AND PETITIONS Medieval Background | 81 |
News | 100 |
RUMORS AND BALLADS | 109 |
Private Correspondence | 118 |
Printing and the Culture of Print | 133 |
PRESSES AND PRINTERS | 134 |
LEGAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES | 140 |
AUTHORS AND SELLERS | 145 |
Petitions | 217 |
PETITIONS AS POLITICAL PROPAGANDA | 221 |
PETITIONS AS INDICATORS OF OPINION IN THE PERIPHERY | 231 |
PETITIONS AND PRINTING | 240 |
THE PARADOX OF INNOVATION IN PETITIONING | 254 |
THE AUTHORITY OF OPINION | 257 |
TOWARD LIBERAL DEMOCRACY | 262 |
Epilogue | 266 |
DEISM SCIENCE AND OPINION | 270 |
CONTEMPORARY IMPLICATIONS | 275 |