Research Catalog

Title

Paper bullets : print and kingship under Charles II / Harold Weber.

Author

Weber, Harold.

Publication

Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

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Holdings

Details

Description

x, 292 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• The calculated use of the 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's 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.

Subject

• Charles II, King of England, 1630-1685 > In literature
• Journalism > History > Great Britain > 17th century
• English literature > Early modern, 1500-1700 > History and criticism
• Printing > History > Great Britain > 17th century
• Politics and literature > Great Britain > History > 17th century
• Censorship > Great Britain > History > 17th century
• Monarchy > Great Britain > History > 17th century
• Kings and rulers in literature
• Great Britain > Historiography. > Charles II, 1660-1685

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [260]-283) and index.

Contents

1. Restoration and Escape: The Incognito King and Providential History -- 2. The Monarch's Sacred Body: The King's Evil and the Politics of Royal Healing -- 3. The Monarch's Profane Body: "His scepter and his prick are of a length" -- 4. "The feminine part of every rebellion": The Public, Royal Power, and the Mysteries of Printing -- 5. "The very Oracles of the Vulgar": Stephen College and the Author on Trial.

ISBN

0813119294 (alk. paper)

LCCN

95014184

OCLC

• 32273776
• ocm32273776

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries