Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688 [Hardcover]

This book surveys the channels through which political ideas and knowledge were conveyed to the English people from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I to the Revolution of 1688. Shapiro argues that an assessment of English political culture requires an examination of all means by which this culture was expressed and communicated. While the discussion focuses primarily on genres such as the sermon, newsbook, poetry, and drama, it also considers the role of events and institutions. Shapiro is the first to explore and elucidate the entire web of communication in early modern English political life.

Barbara Shapiro is Professor in the Graduate School and Emerita Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Shapiro's command is stunning . . . Shapiro's assembly of sources frequently surprise. To anyone working on a related topic, Shapiro's book will be required reading for this reason alone. This book surveys all the channels through which political ideas and knowledge were conveyed to the English public, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I to the Revolution of 1688, with the goal of understanding the web of communication in creating political life. For scholars of politics or media studies in search of a historical overview for their ideas, this volume will provide a wealth of references to a wide range of source material . . . Shapiro has provided a helpful and well-organized overview that will appeal to those scholars seeking to understand the extremely complex and sophisticated channels of political communication in this turbulent period of English history. Barbara J. Shapiro'sPolitical Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688represents an ambitious synthesis, the work of a senior scholar bringing together diverse strands of scholarship and primary source research. While not a research monograph in the traditional sense, the book succeeds in introducing a broad range of concerns associated with theló3