Power & The Reading Public

17th Century Cultural Exchange & Censorship in England &

France

Ilana FeldmanHST 400V

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on
the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a
queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it
was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves
and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.--Charles
Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens serialized the first installments of A Tale of Two

Cities, set in London and Paris during the French Revolution, in April of
1859. Seventy years and two Revolutions had passed since the starving
people of Paris nearly tore their fair queen to pieces in her bed,
dismantled her fortress stone by stone, overthrew her government,
massacred her family, and orchestrated her death. Seventy years, six
regimes, numerous continental skirmishes and colonial uprisings and
still, things in the sovereign nations of Great Brittan and France
remained far from settled for ever.1 The Revolution had done away
with the acienne rgime, but the people of France still languished under
the authoritarian rule of Napoleon III and footed the bill for his wars of
foreign conquest. Queen Victoria and Parliament poured manpower and
capitol into British imperial holdings in Shanghai, Haiti and Calcutta
while the poor of London, Manchester and Bristol struggled to survive on
subsistence wages. As a product of Brittans working class, Dickens was
a vocal critic of what he and many other 19th century writers and
thinkers observed as a continuous and historically substantiated cycle of
state abuses of power. Dickens employed the French Revolution as an
allegory for the consequences of tyranny in his own time as well as the
fraught relationship between Brittan and France.

1 Dickens,Charles.ATaleofTwoCities,1859.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98h/98h.htm

Since the 11th century the two sovereign nations had waged wars,
laid claim to the others territories, exchanged royal bloodlines,
conducted trade, slandered, borrowed, spied, politically outmaneuvered,
and sheltered the others religious refugees and enemies of the state,
including King Charles II of England. As an inroads into a conversation
about censorship and power, specifically censorship and power in the
17th century, A Tale of Two Cities is a useful text for a number of
reasons. In writing about the history of Anglo-French Relations, power,
the state, personal liberty and a disenfranchised public that developed
its own means of subversive communication, Dickens was employing
the same shorthand, the same tropes that had always been used to
describe the tenuous relations between Brittan and France. The same
themes that Dickens observed of the 18th century and superimposed
onto the 19th century have their roots in the late 16th and 17th centuries.
Previous scholarship surrounding 17th century cultural exchange and
censorship in England and France had reduced the historical narrative to
a polarized relationship between the absolutist state and its antithesis,
the subversive public sphere. In my work I seek to qualify the roles of
the absolutist state and the reading public, as well as examine the
equally significant influences of religion, economics, journalism and an
increasing sense of public morality on the dissemination of information
in 17th century Brittan and France.

In 1962, German philosopher and sociologist Jrgen Habermas

published his magnum opus, The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere. Within, he defined his concept of the public sphere as an
arena of uncensored discourse where members of the public could
engage in critique of the state. According to Habermas, the bourgeois
public sphere that developed from the 16th to the 18th century signified
an increasingly literate and politically interested public.2 As Habermas
definitively and sparsely wrote, The bourgeois public sphere may be
conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a
public3 A private person was defined as an individual who owned
property and benefited from the reputation and status that property
ensured. If the public sphere was a living, evolving thing that developed
in and alongside enlightened society, then property was a mooring force
as well as a means of entry. Property conferred status, which allowed
private persons to enter into the public sphere and to engage with
public and institutional authorities on equal footing. Habermass public
sphere was a structured and elite phenomenon that grew in scope and
influence in conjuncture with the constitutional state. Habermass most
vocal critic, historian Robert Darnton, argued that the public sphere was
not a fixed set of institutions in which participation was limited to the

2 Habermas, Jrgen. II Social Structures of the Public Sphere. The Structural

Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.
3 Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989.

members of civil society.4 Darntons public sphere wasnt a guarded

realm that existed only behind the closed doors of salons and coffee
houses. It was a communications phenomenon that signified a change
in the ways in which information was disseminated, either by word of
mouth or through printed materials.5 Darnton had an appreciation for
the plight of the masses, whom he envisioned as integral producers and
consumers of radical political literature that undermined the power of
the absolutist state.6 It is important to note that both Habermas and
Darnton were largely concerned with the growth of public discourse
during the 18th century Enlightenment. They understood the public
sphere as an 18th century phenomenon that was integrally stratified by
class, comprised of either the bourgeois elite or the oppressed masses
whose very existence constituted the antithesis of the absolutist state.
In reality, the public sphere developed over the course of the 15th
through 18th centuries both in conjunction with and in response to the
power of the state. Political unrest over the course of the 17th century in
Brittan and France made for censorships greatest moment, as the
reading public renegotiated its relationship to government and
4 Brophy, James. "Poupular Culture and the Public Sphere." In Popular Culture
and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850. Cambridge University
Press, 2010.
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/47698/excerpt/9780521847698_excerpt.pdf.

5 ibid.
6 Barker, Hannah. Press, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Europe and North

America, 1760-1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 22.

https://books.google.com/books?
id=XSmy67JgvAsC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=darnton+and+the+public+spher
e.

institutions of power.7 The growth of a reading public would not have

been possible without the invention of the printing press, circa 1450.
Prior to the advent of printing the suppression of the written word was a
relatively simple task: afterward, it became nearly impossible. The
mechanization of printing contributed to the dramatic rise in literacy
from the 15th to the 18th century, especially in the Northwest of Europe.
By 1530 twenty-five percent of men in Brittan could read and write, a
margin that was presumably even greater in metropolitan
London.8 The rise of a reading public, with access to works of philosophy
and science as well as scripture, was met by attempts from clerical and
lay institutions to keep seditious texts from garnering an even greater
audience.9
Although the Catholic Church had always concerned itself with
suppressing writings and ideas that threatened its authority, the
Protestant Reformation had made it clear that the Church needed to
recentralize its power and reestablish its hold on the direction of the
faith. The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, produced a
more disciplined Church doctrine as well as added new texts and
authors it deemed to be heretical or lascivious in nature to the Index

7 Joseph Loewenstein, Legal proofs and Corrected Readings: Press Agency

and the New Bibliography, in The Production of English Renaissance Culture,

ed. David Lee Miller et al. (Cornell University Press, 1994), 118.
8 Robertson, Randy. Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-century England:
The Subtle Art of Division. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968.
9 Robertson, Randy. Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-century England:
The Subtle Art of Division. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968, 2.

Librorum Prohibitorum, or Index of Prohibited Books. 10 Over the course

of the 17th century the Index Prohibitorum would come to include
revered works of science, philosophy and mathematics by Hobbes,
Descartes, Bacon and later Milton and Spinoza. The Church also ordered
that book-dealers as well as othersobserve whatever is known to
have been proscribed on the threat of excommunication.11 In doing so
the Church recognized the economic influence of the book trade in Early
Modern Europe, as well as its own reliance on European heads of state
to enforce Church censorship.While the Catholic Church was concerned
with preventing the distribution of unsanctioned translations of the Old
Testament or texts supporting heliocentrism, authorities of the state
employed other means of tempering public discourse to their favor.
The 1640s were a prescient and telling decade for the French and
English monarchies. It was a decade of revolution and political upheaval.
In1643 the boy king Louis XIV ascended to the throne of France amidst
growing disquiet from the nobility and ministers of his government.
Stuart England was on the eve of civil war. In order to eradicate
opposition and secure their rule, both Charles I and Louis XIV supported
institutions to regulate the publishing and dissemination of information
that could jeopardize the crown as well as generate state propaganda.
State censorship in England operated differently than in France during
10 "Modern History Sourcebook: Council of Trent: Rules on Prohibited Books."
Fordham University Modern History Sourcebook. ed. Paul Halsall, 1999.
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/trent-booksrules.asp.
11 Ibid.

the 17th century for two reasons. Firstly, the Anglican Church had
brought religion in England under the jurisdiction of government,
making the regulation and distribution of religious texts a prerogative of
the state. Second, the Protestant Reformation had created a lucrative
printing and bookselling market where readers could buy translated
works and copies of the New Testament in English. As the anonymous
author of The London Printers Lamentation, dated 1660, wrote, In one
dayes time a Printer will Print more, / Than one man Write could in a
Year before.12 The only way to enforce censorship in Brittans booming
print economy was by imposing economic and legal restrictions on the
publishing industry. Since the Tudors book printers had been required to
obtain licenses from the crown in order to do business. King Henry VIII
had composed a list of forbidden texts in 1529, fifteen years before the
Council of Trent.13 One such printers and booksellers guild, the
Stationers Company, received the Royal Charter
from Henry VIII in 1557. Over the course of the Tudor and Stuart
monarchies, the Stationers Company grew into a state sponsored
monopoly imbued with the legal power to seize texts that violated the
statues set down by the Church and the monarchy. In 1637 the kings
Star Chambera private arm of government comprised of Charles Is
Privy Council and immediate friends and advisors that grew in power
12 The London Printers Lamentation, or, the Press opprest, and overprest, 2.
George Thomas dated his copy 1660, Sep. 3.
13 Robertson, Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-century England: The
Subtle Art of Division, 2.

and prominence during the 17th century in opposition to Parliament

decreed an even more elaborate set of regulations to govern licensing
and printing.14 The Star Chamber was Charles Is way of circumventing
the authority of Parliament by creating his own legal body of ministers
and officials. The Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 solidified the
Stationers Company monopoly and, proposed new regulations for the
press to prevent the Printing of libellous and seditious Books, did most
conduce to the securing of the Peace of the Kingdom.15 Although it was
not a product of the state or a branch of government, the Stationers
Company was an economically and politically influential organization
that regulated public discourse and produced propaganda for the state.
Louis XIV also created institutions to govern the reading public of
France, however unlike Charles I he did not have a Parliament to
contend with. Louis XIV assumed the throne of France in 1643 at five
years of age. Until his majority, the country was in the hands of the
queen consort, Anne of Austria, and her deeply distrusted Italian chief
minister, Cardinal Mazarin.16 Mazarins taxation policies, his
Disregard for the authority of French governing bodies, and his
unwavering supporter in the queen consort provoked unrest amongst
14 Spurr, John. England in the 1670s: The Masquerading Age. Oxford, UK:

Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

15 Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)
(www.copyrighthistory.org).Licensing Act, London (1662).
http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRepresentation?
id=representation_uk_1662
16 Merrick, Jeffrey. The Cardinal and the Queen: Sexual and Political Disorders
in the Mazarinades, French Historical Studies, Vol. 18, 3. Society for French
Historical Studies, 100.

the people and the land owning nobility. Animosity toward the regency
resulted in the Fronde; a series of uprisings among the French people,
magistrates and barons between 1648 and 1654. After Mazarin died in
1661 Louis XIV appointed himself his own head minister to show that no
mans word or opinion was higher than that of the king. Under Louis XIV,
the use of state imagery and public display for political propaganda
became especially prominent, specifically when it was used to glorify
the image of the king. The kings Petite cabinet, where he would
summon his advisors and ministers to discuss matters of state, was
adorned with rich tapestries glorifying his rule.17 Andr Flibien, a visitor
to the court of the Sun King, described a particular tableau that
contained an allegory depicting the king as Jupiter.
[A thunderbolt striking down a great Treeto signify that His
Majesty forgives the humble but casts down and destroys the
proud.]18
The function of the extravagant, allegory-laden art and architecture that
adorned Versailles was to express authority to a select group of family
members, courtiers and distinguished foreign dignitaries; individuals
that Louis XIV found it necessary to impress with his splendor for the
security of the realm. Authors like Flibien brought images of the
extravagance of French court to German and Dutch printmakers. Like

17 Adams, David. Print and Power in France and England, 1500-1800.

Burlington, VT, 2006.
18 Adams, Print and Power in France and England., 71.

10

the Stuarts, Louis XIV required that printers receive a charter from the
crown. He also established Petite Acadmies to generate texts, imagery
and verses in praise of the king and to manufacture and govern high art
and culture.19 Eventually, he required that all authors submit the titles of
their works to the crown for approval.20 Unlike Charles I, Louis XIV was
able to quell the threat of insurrection after 1653 by reorganizing the
administration and finances of France, developing trade, and financing
art and culture. Charles I also had to contend with heavy anti-Catholic
sentiment and accusations of papacy, which was incendiary criticism
for the head of the Anglican Church. In Catholic France Louis XIV, his
money, and his court brought his barons temporarily to heel, at least
during the latter half of his reign.
During the Fronde and its immediate aftereffects from 1641 until
the 1660s, book sales in Paris had never been higher.21 However, the
distribution of actual titles of French books dropped considerably during
the Fronde, then continued to rise and fall until the 18th century
Enlightenment created a fad for reading. In England, enrollment in
universities was never higher than on the eve of the English Civil War.22
It seemed instability within the state bred both an authorship and an
audience for printed materials, as well as made censorship laws and

19 Ibid., 70. 9.
20 Martin, Henri. The French Book: Religion, Absolutism, and Readership,
1585-1715. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, 7 3.
21 Henri, The Catholic Reformation and the Book, The French Book, 23.
22 Henri, The French Book, 21.
11

publishing sanctions all the more difficult to enforce. The primary

audiences for political literature, either in Brittan or in France on the eve
of revolution were those who had a stake in politics, meaning largely
educated, property-owning men. However, word of mouth, imagery and
performance were powerful tools for spreading information as well as
incendiary misinformation amongst the rest of the slowly growing
reading public. After the ascendency of Cardinal Mazarin, defaming
pamphlets known as libels, or in the case of the Cardinal Mazarin known
as Mazarinades, flooded Paris with slanderous verses.23 One such libelle
vilified Mazarin and Anne of Austria by accusing them of
mismanaging the states money as well as personal indiscretion.
The Cardinal f[ucks] the Regent;
Whats worse, the buggar boasts about it
And steals all her money from her.24
It was clearly allegory at work; the same rumors had been spread about
Catherine de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu. They were tried and
colloquial, but effective. Despite their narrative familiarity, such pointed
insinuations had added fuel to the public ire that had led to the Fronde.
Libels were also heavily circulated in Tudor and Stuart England, and not
just in criticism of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs but also their
supporters. Roger LEstrange, a devout Royalist pamphleteer and
23 Merrick, The Cardinal and the Queen: Sexual and Political Disorders in the
Mazarinades, French Historical Studies, 101.
24 Les Chansons libertines de Claude de Chouvigny, baron de Blot lEglise
(1605-1655) (1919; reprint ed., Geneva, 1968), ed. Frdrick Lachvre, 17.

12

frequent defender of the Stationers Company, railed against libelists in

his 1678 pamphlet An Account of the Growth of Knavery. Within, he
wrote, No sooner is there a Pique taken up against the Government, or
against Any man that according to his Duty, Endeavours to support it;
but presently That Malevolence yields matter for a Libell.25 LEstranges
words were met with a flurry of contemptuous, anonymous publication.
Libels circulated within the court were just that; phenomenon
whose authors and intended audience were the literate and politically
knowledgeable elite. In Stuart England that meant Charles Is Royalist
supporters. Politics in Brittan and France in general, at least until the
mid-17th century, was the dominion of property owning, aristocratic,
white men. These were the individuals who inhabited court and
contributed to the veritable buzz of rumors and political jabs at the
monarch and each other, fellow courtiers contentiously jostling for
position. As a woman at the head of the English monarchy, Elizabeth I
was the subject of many Tudor libels criticizing her reign. Many of
Elizabeth Is portraits of state were decorated with patterns of eyes and
ears; reminders that the queen was always listening for incriminating
speech. However, during the ensuing Stuart years she was often
nostalgically praised for bringing about a golden age of England. In one
piece of allegorical dialogue printed 1687, the character Britannia

25 Roger LEstrange, A Short Answer to a Whole Litter of Libellers (London,

1680), I.

13

complained to Walter Raleigh, executed for treason in 1618, of the

degeneration of the English crown.
BRITANNIA: A Colony of French possess the Court;
Pimps, Priests, Buffoons in th' Privy Chamber sport;
Such slimy Monsters ne'r approacht a Throne
Since Pharaoh's Days, nor so defil'd a Crown.26
These later Stuart libels were more blatant in their language and more
unguarded in their purpose. They also contained heavy anti-Catholic
sentiments that reflect increasing resentment for the Stuart monarchs.
Libels French counterparts,
Mazarinades, were powerful tools of sedition. However they were also
regionally disseminated texts that contained elements of truth but also
provincial elements of fiction.27 Both early libels and libelles were limited
in their circulatory audience before the revolutions of the mid-17th
century. In some ways, print culture in Restoration England was a
reconciliation between Habermass bourgeois public sphere and
Darntons common peoples public sphere. Prior to the English Civil War
libels were produced and read amongst what Habermas would classify
as the bourgeoisiearistocratic, educated members of court and

26 Marvel, Andrew. Rawleighs Ghost in Darkness: or Truth coverd with a

Veil, Chorus Poetarum, 1689.

http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?
action=GET&textsid=33625
27 Adams, David. Print and Power in France and England, 1500-1800.
Burlington, VT, 2006.

14

Parliament. However, during the Restoration nothing seemed to have

circulated so fast as news.28
The English Civil War had emboldened the lower classes, who now
expected to be able to debate public affairs on the same terms as their
superiors, so to speak. Public debate required an accessible forum and
found it in one increasingly popular English social institution, the coffeehouse. Coffee-houses catered to nearly all levels of society and replaced
the previously favored watering hole, the English pub. In the sobering
environment of the coffee-house news and gossip could be
disseminated and commentated on, new political pamphlets could be
read and discussed, and ideas about philosophy, religion and economics
could be exchanged. Patrons often complained of the sobering and
energizing effects of coffee on the mental constitution compared to a
tankard of ale. The explosion of writing designed to engage audiences
across multiple levels of society meant that no entity was safe from
public scrutiny, including coffee-houses themselves. News was an
elastic category29 that spread largely by word of mouth. Print news and
periodicals would come to prominence during the latter half of the 17th
century due to estrictions designed to prevent the circulation of idle
and malicious reports intended to disturb the people according to the
Duke of Sutherland, who wrote a reaction to coffee-house culture in the

28 Spurr, John. England in the 1670s: The Masquerading Age. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
29 Spurr, 166.

15

Gazette in 1676.30 The Gazette was one of many state controlled

periodicals serialized during
the 17th century in order to meet the publics growing demand for
information. The anonymous pamphlet The Character of a CoffeeHouse, published in 1673, repeatedly alluded to the Gunpowder Plot of
1605, likening it to coffee that scalds your throat, as if you had
swallowed the Gunpowder-Treason. The implication being that coffeehouses bred dangerous political malcontent on the basis of
misinformation and gossip.
Most critiques of coffee-house culture came from well bred men of
arts and letters, although they contributed to the same continuous
public discourse that also produced criticisms of government officials
and the goings on of Parliament. However, coffee-houses were not
unrestricted forums for free speech where the masses could air their
grievances with impunity. The bookseller John Twyn was executed for
treason in 1664 after LEstrange discovered that he had printed a call
for the overthrow of Charles II.31 As a result, most scandalous or
seditious literature appeared without licenses or references to the
authors names. Although the state
still made a point of persecuting those who violated censorship law, by
the end of the 17th century state censorship in England had begun to
wane. The state could not easily control the spread seditious speech
30 Spurr, 168.
31 Spurr, 172.
16

when most news and information traveled by word of mouth, especially

in urban centers like London. LEstrange and other government officials
put out laundry lists of titles, from political commentary to transcripts of
speeches in Parliament, as well as calls for their publishers to answer to
the crown.32 However, there was something decidedly feeble in having
to place a call
for title after title, author after author. One early 20th century historian,
D. F. McKenzie, compiled a list of a sampling of texts published between
1641 and 1700 from the journals of the Lords of Commons, state
papers, and the court books of the Stationers Company.33 Of the eight
hundred titles mentioned, about four hundred were found to be suspect.
Subsequent studies have proven that the ratio of suspect to non-suspect
texts was even greater. However, each text mentioned in McKenzies
study went through multiple reprintings and editions, suggesting a
continuous and active readership even for seditious literature. Clearly,
the states attempts to gag the press were not nearly as effective as its
measures were extreme.
Not all members of the public sphere were willing to engage the state
over censorship. Many authors, particularly in France, found ways to
negotiate their art within the harsh boundaries of the state. Louis XIV
imposed strict intellectual absolutism34 by establishing standards for

32 Ibid.
33 Robertson, Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-century England, 5
34 Martin. The French Book, 69.
17

art, science, mathematics, architecture, and theater. Louis XIV had

adopted a taste for neoclassicism from Cardinal Richelieu and
demanded that all theater adhere to Greco-Roman stock characters,
plots and themes.35 The celebrated French playwrite Molire was a
favourite of Louis XIV. He wrote in adherence with the guidelines
established by classical antiquity, which was the preference of literary
critics and familiar to court audiences.36 However, Molire needed to
maintain royal favor in order to maintain his career. Patronage, or the
commissioning of artists and writers by men of means and influence,
meant that the aristocracy had a firm hand on culture, at least during
the first half of the 17th century. The result was a mutually reinforcing
process by which the aristocracy in France bent artists and writers to
produce state propaganda and add to the spectacle that was Versailles.
However, Louis XIVs patronage also provided Molire with means and a
place in the glittering French court, which was the ideal place for a
playwrite whose living depended solely upon the favor of the monarch.
Shakespeare had maintained a cordial relationship with the English
monarchs by setting most of his plays in Italy or the Netherlands.
Elizabeth I even allowed Richard III to be performed, despite its damning
image of an English monarch. A week later, however, she had another
company of players thrown in the Tower of London for a week for putting
on an unsanctioned performance with an added brief, political
35 Martin, 67.
36 Molire. The School for Wives. London: Oberon Books, 1997.
18

commentary at the beginning.37 17th century artists and writers

negotiated the delicate balance between practicing their craft and
praising the hand that fed them. State patronage created a culture of
omission reinforced by visual rhetoric.
On the whole, the 17th century has been refereed to as the age of
reputation because it saw the popularization of decorum and the
growth of so called civil society.38 The public, either knowingly or
unknowingly, and sometimes strategically limited itself in accordance
with the unspoken dictates of polite society. The court of Versailles was
a painfully elaborate ecosystem in which each member of the staff eve
had a place in the distinct internal hierarchy. Behavior was governed
down to the height of ones heel or the manner or ones introduction.
According to historian Norbert Elias and his expansive work, The
Civilizing Process, society was and has always been subject to a long
process of self-restraint and impulse management.39 Like Habermas,
Elias understood civilization as a division between the interests of the
bourgeoisie and the interests of the state. Many of Eliass theories about
manners, as well as many contemporary guides for comportment and
conduct were borrowed from Erasmuss A Handbook For Good Manners
for Children.40 Erasmus was an early 16th century humanist and religious

37 Spurr.
38 Spurr.
39 Gousdbloom, J. The Theory of the Civilizing Process and its Discontents.
Amsterdam, NE, 1994.
40 Ibid.

19

writer whose theories on civility, according to Elias, manifested

themselves in the aristocratic courts of Europe. The bourgeoisie adopted
certain behaviors from the aristocracy and the aristocracy continued to
refine its own closed society in order to maintain its distinguished
position in society. The result was increasingly refined, learned
behaviors and sensitivity to the nuances of social interaction. The age
of reputation signified an increased awareness of the self and of how
ones actions made one appear in the eyes of the larger body public.
Libels were all the more dangerous to the reputations of public figures
because they contained as much truth as they did fiction. And yet, libels
were widely published, read and discussed. Revolutions had coalesced
around the accusations and speculations raised in popular pamphlets.
Praise traveled just as quickly as slander, but slander was decidedly the
more compelling read.
The 17th Century in Brittan and France saw a renegotiation of
terms between absolutists monarchy and the will of the reading public.
That is not to suggest, as Habermas does, that the public sphere
catered exclusively to the upper middle class. However, it was also far
from free and open forum for unguarded discussion. The 17th century
public sphere was influenced as much by the power of the state as by
faith, economics, periodicals, and an increased awareness of morality
and decorum.

20

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