Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain

Download or read book Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain written by Mark Knights and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2005 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each side, and those ostensibly of no side, discerned a culture of passion, slander, libel, lies, hypocrisy, dissimulation, conspiracy, private languages, and fictions. 'Truth' appeared an ambiguous, political matter. Yet the reaction to partisanship was also creative, for it helped to construct an ideal form of political discourse. This was one based on reason rather than passion, on moderation rather than partisan zeal, on critical reading rather than credulity; and an increasing realization that these virtues arose from infrequent rather than frequent elections. Finding synergies between social, political, religious, scientific, literary, cultural, and intellectual history, "Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain" reinvigorates the debate about the emergence of 'the public sphere' in the later Stuart period