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Description
The calculated use of media by those in power is a phenomenon dating back at least to the seventeenth century, as Harold Weber demonstrates in this illuminating study of the relation of print culture to kingship under England’s Charles II. Seventeenth-century London witnessed an enormous expansion of the print trade, and with this expansion came a revolutionary change in the relation between political authority—especially the monarchy—and the printed word.
Weber argues that Charles’ reign was characterized by a particularly fluid relationship between print and power. The press helped bring about both the deconsecration of divine monarchy and the formation of a new public sphere, but these processes did not result in the progressive decay of royal authority. Charles fashioned his own semiotics of power out of the political transformations that had turned his world upside down.
By linking diverse and unusual topics—the escape of Charles from Worcester, the royal ability to heal scrofula, the sexual escapades of the “merry monarch,” and the trial and execution of Stephen College—Weber reveals the means by which Charles took advantage of a print industry instrumental to the creation of a new dispensation of power, one in which the state dominates the individual through the supplementary relationship between signs and violence.
Weber’s study brings into sharp relief the conflicts involving public authority and printed discourse, social hierarchy and print culture, and authorial identity and responsibility—conflicts that helped shape the modern state.
Harold M. Weber is associate professor of English at the University of Alabama.
“Impressive . . . offers an important, distinctive contribution to current scholarship on the cultural significance of developments in print and press, gender relations, literary property, and authorship."—1650-1850
"Weber shows what I think is too often forgotten, that so many of the concerns associated with the chronological eighteenth century must be inflected by reference to their genealogies in specifically Restoration culture."—Journal of English and Germanic Philology
"Leads us through a rich array of hitherto unexamined texts—escape narratives, healing rituals, trials, anonymous poems, diary entries—during a crucial moment of change in English history."—Modern Philology
Publication Date
1995
Publisher
The University Press of Kentucky
Place of Publication
Lexington, KY
ISBN
9780813119298
eISBN
9780813156675
Keywords
Charles II, History of journalism, Print culture, Censorship
Disciplines
European History
Recommended Citation
Weber, Harold M., "Paper Bullets: Print and Kingship under Charles II" (1995). European History. 26.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_european_history/26
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