Venice, war and public opinion
Seminar Tutor
Luca Molà
Site Visit
The Arsenale. Meet outside the main gate of the Arsenale.
Seminar Questions
- Did a public sphere exist in Renaissance Italy? Did it influence politics?
- How and why was Renaissance Venice a center of information and communication?
- Was Venice different from other cities in this regard?
- Discuss the effect of war/crisis on political communication and public opinion in Renaissance Venice.
Key Texts
- F. De Vivo, “Public Sphere or Communication Triangle? Information and Politics in Early Modern Europe”, in M. Rospocher (ed.), Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (Bologna, 2012).
- M. Rospocher and R. Salzberg, “An Evanescent Public Sphere. Voices, Spaces, and Publics in Venice during the Italian Wars”, in M. Rospocher (ed.), Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (Bologna, 2012).
- P. Burke, “Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication”, in J. Martin and D. Romano (eds), Venice Reconsidered. The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State (1297-1797) (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 389-419.
Further Reading
- M. Rospocher, “Beyond the Public Sphere: A Historiographical Transition”, in M. Rospocher (ed.), Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (Bologna, 2012).
- A. Brown, ‘Rethinking the Renaissance in the Aftermath of Italy’s Crisis’, in John Najemy, ed., Italy in the Age of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2004), pp. 246-65.
- F. De Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford, 2007).
- Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 1494-1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (London, 2014)
- F. Gilbert, "Venice in the crisis of the League of Cambrai", in ed. J. R. Hale, Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), pp. 274 - 292.
- A. Briggs and P. Burke, A social history of the media: from Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 72-105.
- C. Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere (Boston, 1993)
- J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Boston, 1991)
- S. Landi, Naissance de l’opinion publique dans l’Italie moderne. Sagesse du peuple et savoir de gouvernement de Machiavel aux Lumières (Rennes, 2006)
- P. Lake and S. Pincus (eds), The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007)
- M. Meserve, “News from Negroponte: Politics, Popular Opinion and Information Exchange in the First Decade of the Italian Press”, Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006): 440-480
- S. Van Damme, “Farewell Habermas? Deux décennies d’études sur l’ancien régime de l’espace public”, in P. Boucheron and N. Offenstadt (eds), L’espace public au moyen age. Debats atour de Jürgen Habermas (Paris 2011), pp. 43-62.
- B. Dooley, 'The Public Sphere and the Organization of Knowledge', in Early Modern Italy: 1550-1796, ed. J. A. Marino (Oxford, 2002), 209-28.
- M. Infelise, "The war, the news and the curious: military gazettes in Italy", in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. B. Dooley and S. Baron (London, 2001).
- M. Infelise, "News Networks Between Italy and Europe", in Brendan Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, UK, 2010)
- R. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980).
- R. Finlay, "Fabius Maximus in Venice: Doge Andrea Gritti, the War of Cambrai, and the Rise of Habsburg Hegemony, 1509-1530", Renaissance Quarterly 53/4 (2000): 988-1031.
- B. Dooley “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture. Or, Are We Having a Public Sphere Yet?” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. B. Dooley S. Baron (London, 2001), 275-90.
