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The essays in this collection demonstrate how Fama and her sisters, gossip and rumour, were central in private and public discourses about state and society in early modern Europe. In an era when oral, scribal, visual, and print cultures competed to satisfy a growing public demand for ‘news’, gossip and rumour informed people about the actions and morals of their social and political elites, and they commonly enabled people who did not usually participate in politics to engage with the public discourses about religion, governance, and society which shaped their lives and the state. So while gossip and rumour might be scurrilous and entertaining, they nonetheless performed a vital political function, regulating communal and political behaviour in the upper social echelons, as well as in neighbourhoods lower down the social scale where they might constitute a form of popular justice. This timely interdisciplinary study explores how gossip and rumour functioned dualistically at all levels of the early modern state and society either to advance or to defame reputations, and thereby shape public opinion.

Comparative literature --- Thematology --- anno 1200-1799 --- Europe --- Geruchten in de literatuur --- Gossip in literature --- Kwaadsprekers in de literatuur --- Mauvaise langue dans la littérature --- Rumeures dans la littérature --- Rumor in literature --- Commérage --- Gossip --- Rumor --- Gossip in literature. --- Rumor in literature. --- Gossip. --- Rumor. --- History --- 1500-1799. --- Europe. --- 16th century --- 17th century --- 18th century

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Secret history, with its claim to expose secrets of state and the sexual intrigues of monarchs and ministers, alarmed and thrilled readers across Europe and America from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Scholars have recognised for some time the important position that the genre occupies within the literary and political culture of the Enlightenment. Of interest to students of British, French and American literature, as well as political and intellectual history, this new volume of essays demonstrates for the first time the extent of secret history's interaction with different literary traditions, including epic poetry, Restoration drama, periodicals, and slave narratives. It reveals secret history's impact on authors, readers, and the book trade in England, France, and America throughout the long eighteenth century. In doing so, it offers a case study for approaching questions of genre at moments when political and cultural shifts put strain on traditional generic categories.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Cultural Policy. --- Political culture --- Political culture. --- Politics and literature --- Politics and literature. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture. --- History --- 1600-1799. --- Great Britain. --- English literature --- Secrecy in literature --- Gossip in literature. --- Literature and history --- English literature. --- Literature and history. --- Secrecy in literature. --- History and criticism --- Comparative literature --- Thematology --- anno 1600-1699 --- anno 1800-1899 --- anno 1700-1799 --- Literature, Modern --- History and criticism.