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Publics and Participation: England, Britain, and Europe in the “Post-Reformation”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2017

Abstract

This article responds to the pieces collected in this special issue of the Journal of British Studies, all of which seek to take some notion of the politics of the public sphere and either apply it to, or break it upon the wheel of, various versions of British history during the post-Reformation period. It seeks to bring the other articles into conversation both with one another as well as with existing work on the topic.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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References

1 Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steven, The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, “Post Reformation Politics, or, On Not Looking for the Long-Term Causes of the English Civil War,” in The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution, ed. Braddick, Michael J. (Oxford, 2015), 2139 Google Scholar; idem, The Theatre and the ‘Post Reformation Public Sphere,’” in The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, ed. Smuts, Malcolm (Oxford, 2016), 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2016)Google Scholar; idem, How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the Histories (London, 2016)Google Scholar.

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4 Sandeep Kauchik of Princeton University began and substantially completed, but never submitted, an outstanding thesis in the 1990s on John Williams as a purveyor of the politics of popularity.

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19 Brian Cowan's ongoing research on the Sacheverell affair will prove of the greatest significance here. I thank him for the many discussions upon which this paragraph draws heavily.

20 Harris, “Publics and Participation.”

21 This paragraph is based on long discussions with, and forthcoming work by, Alex Barber. See also Cowan, Brian, “Mr. Spectator and the Coffeehouse Public Sphere,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 345–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 351.

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25 Stewart, Rethinking, esp. chaps. 1–2.

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27 Harris, “Publics and Participation.”

28 Bowie, Karin and Raffe, Alasdair, “Politics, the People, and Extra-Institutional Participation in Scotland, c. 1603–1712,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 797815 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 The seminal work is Tyacke, Nicholas, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar. For the notion of hegemony, see Lake, Peter, “Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635,” Past and Present, no. 114 (February 1987): 3276 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Stewart, Rethinking, chap. 6.

31 Bulman, Bill, Anglican Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2015), 219 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 251. Cf. Sowerby, Scott, Making Toleration (Cambridge, MA, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Geertz, Clifford, “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books, 1973), 330 Google Scholar, at 3. I owe this reference to David Magliocco.

33 Bradshaw, Brendan, “The Tudor Reformation and Revolution in Wales and Ireland: The Origins of the British Problem,” in The British Problem, c. 1535–1707, ed. Bradshaw, Brendan and Morrill, John (Basingstoke, 1996), 3965 Google Scholar.

34 Harris, “Publics and Participation.”

35 Peacey, “Print Culture, State Formation.”

36 Ibid.; Harris, “Publics and Participation.”

37 Darcy, Eamon, “Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 773–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 788.

38 Bradshaw, “Tudor Reformation.”

39 Bowen, Lloyd, “Structuring Particularist Publics: Logistics, Language, and Early Modern Wales,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 754–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stewart, Laura A. M., “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 709–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Bowen, Lloyd, “Information, Language and Political Culture in Early Modern Wales,” Past and Present, no. 228 (August 2015): 125–58, at 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Bowen, “Structuring Particularist Publics”; Darcy, “Political Participation.”

42 Ibid.; Stewart, “Publics and Participation.”

43 Cust, Richard, ed., The Papers of Sir Richard Grosvenor, 1st Bart. (1585–1645) (Lancashire and Cheshire, 1996)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, “Puritans, Petitions and Popularity: Local Politics and National Contexts, Cheshire, 1641,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity, ed. Cogswell, Tom, Cust, Richard, and Lake, Peter (Cambridge, 2002), 259–89Google Scholar.