Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Abstract

The " public sphere " has become ubiquitous in the historiography and in historically oriented literary criticism of early modern England. In this article, we argue that the phrase does have real efficacy in discussions of early modern England. However, we want to use " public sphere " in slightly different ways than most scholars have done. In particular, we argue that a narrative of the emergence of the public sphere, in the ways we will define it, can be used to talk coherently about the entire period from the Reformation into the eighteenth century. The " public sphere " has been moving backward in time. The term " bourgeois public sphere " originally referred to a particular kind of Enlightenment discussion. However, " public sphere " now appears frequently in articles and monographs referring to the Restoration, the Interregnum, the Civil War, and it is even invading the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. 1 Steve Pincus is professor of history at Yale University, and Peter Lake is professor of history at Princeton University. This article had its origins as a position paper presented at the North Atlantic Conference on British Studies (NACBS) at Philadelphia in 2004. It was intended then, as now, to provoke comment and debate. It is therefore not a conventional journal article but rather both a critique of some recent scholarship on early modern England and a proposal for reconfiguring the period. It is far more a framework for further research than a set of firm conclusions. We are grateful for the criticism and suggestions of those present at the NACBS session, especially of the respondents John Marshall, Kevin Sharpe, and Julia Adams; the two anonymous readers; and Anna Clark. We are also grateful for dis-cussions with