Sovereign intelligence and sovereign intelligencers: Transforming standards of credibility in English military news from ca. 1570 to 1637.

摘要

The dissertation's central thesis is that as the primary medium of English military news shifted in the hundred years before the outbreak of the British Civil Wars, each change of medium required a corresponding shift in standards of credibility before such news could be believed. Military news was first conveyed either orally (an incredible medium) or by (royal) rituals that established credibility by their communal, public performance. The shift to written military news, largely exchanged privately and sociably among English gentlemen, relied upon the creation of a new standard of credibility, based upon the honor of these gentle newswriters and newsreaders. The ensuing development of commercial and printed military news, public, anonymous, and vulgar, required yet a new standard of credibility. The first generation of printed military news, news pamphlets and news ballads from 1585--1610, exaggeratedly mimicked ritual, honorable, and sociable standards of credibility; they also shifted the focus of credibility from the newswriter to the news text. The second generation of printed military news, corantos (early newspapers) from 1618 to 1637, developed the still-surviving standard of extensive credibility, derived from reading multiple, anonymous texts. This standard soon proved successful: an examination of diaries and letters from the period shows a relatively quick acceptance by newsreaders of the new extensive standard of credibility.; The shifting credibility of English military news also registered and promoted the shift of political authority in early modern England, from news-monopolizing king to gentle newsreaders to newsreading public. The rhetoric of the humanist news letter, which provided the basic template for the news through these changes in medium, also infused the news, newswriters, and newsreaders with the humanist political belief that private citizens had both the competence and the duty to read about, communicate, comment upon, and so involve themselves in public affairs. The revolutionary shift in epistemological authority required for extensive newsreading implied an equally revolutionary shift in political authority.