Search results for ""author joop w. koopmans""

This volume presents thirteen contributions relating to various aspects of the relationship between news and politics in early modern Europe. A growing range of printed news media started interacting during this period, affecting the political culture of the time. This is clearly illustrated by the contents of this volume. In addition to oral and written forms of news distribution, all sorts of printed pamphlets, newspapers, news books and other periodicals examining the widely varying facets of the interaction between news and politics are presented. There are various other sources which also shed light on this interaction, such as the memoirs of politicians, festival books, political songs and theatre texts. These sources, drawn on by the history of the press to a lesser degree, are discussed in connection with questions about propaganda, censorship, the formation of public opinion, news suppliers and political networks. The essays offer a stimulating overview of the changes and continuity in this field.

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Power in the early modern age, as in the present age, is an important subject for debate. What is power? Who has it or should have it? What are the underlying reasons for this? And especially, how is this power exercised, legitimised, and accepted? The issue of power in Europe in the early modern age is all the more significant because the demarcation line between the worldly and the religious component of power is not always clearly drawn. The fact is that power can only exist in a structured context where there is a measure of approval and consensus on the way that power is constituted and exercised. It is actually about the relationship between those who have or crave power and those who find themselves in subordinate positions. Many means of persuasion are deployed in propaganda mechanisms to underscore the rightness or superiority of this relationship. The reverse side of this phenomenon is equally important: the extent to which criticism is being voiced and other opinions are being proclaimed is at least as relevant to an evaluation of the relationship between both groups, i.e. rulers and subordinates. In societies where pomp and circumstance bear the brunt of the persuasive process - since not everyone can read or write - visual elements are crucial: painting, sculpture, architecture, urban planning, court parties and ceremonies play a major role, as do all the products issued by the printing presses: tracts and pamphlets, illustrated or unillustrated. The essays in this volume deal not so much with theories of power but rather with the ways that rulers attempt to motivate the legitimation of their power and convey their own superiority, be it genuine or spurious. They focus on the persuasive production emanating from governments as well as on the reactions of other parties, which show both confirmative and contesting tendencies.

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This is the third of three volumes from the project 'Authority and Persuasion: the Role of Commonplaces in Western Europe (c.1450-c.1800)'. The project was launched by the universities of Copenhagen, Durham and Groningen and involved scholars from a range of disciplines who researched the use of commonplaces as a means of persuasion in the early modern world. Commonplace as a technical term refers to the loci communes collected in late medieval and early modern commonplace books. In the project, however, the notion of commonplace was broadened to include means of persuasion in all kinds of texts as well as the visual arts, theatre, music and other media. This broader notion embraces metaphors, proverbs, figures, and expressions that enjoyed both a history of use in a given society or language community and a wide currency in that society. This third volume, subtitled 'Legitimation of Authority', focuses on the eighteenth century, an era in which many new political groups appeared, challenging and confronting existing rulers and elites, who in turn were forced to find alternative ways of legitimating their authority. Although the traditional commonplace books went out of fashion, the ten contributions in this volume demonstrate that practices of quotation as well as persuasive uses of stock material did not disappear. As in the previous two volumes, the authors represented in the present one have studied the use of generalised commonplaces in different sources and genres and in various media, such as political rituals and symbols, news sources, reference books, literature and also theatre and music. The first volume concerns 'Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt, and the second volume deals with 'Consolidation of God-given Power'.

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