An Evanescent Public Sphere. Voices, Spaces, and Publics in Venice during the Italian Wars

For fifty years Habermas’s ideal-typical model of the public sphere has been the catalyst for historiographical debate about public opinion and been recognized as an interpretative paradigm of the development of Western society. Inspired by the fundamental question of the relationship between power and communication, historians of the Ancien régime are currently exploring avenues of research which go beyond the public sphere. In this book leading North American and European scholars engage critically with this fundamental concept of political modernity and present a new way of thinking about early modern politics.