Skip to Main Content

Cultures of Diplomacy and Literary Writing in the Early Modern World

Online ISBN:
9780191873225
Print ISBN:
9780198835691
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Cultures of Diplomacy and Literary Writing in the Early Modern World

Tracey A. Sowerby (ed.),
Tracey A. Sowerby
(ed.)
Programme Director, European Scholars Programme and Faculty Member, History Faculty, University of Oxford
Find on
Joanna Craigwood (ed.)
Joanna Craigwood
(ed.)
Team Leader, Personal and Professional Development, HR Division, University of Cambridge
Find on
Published online:
22 August 2019
Published in print:
20 June 2019
Online ISBN:
9780191873225
Print ISBN:
9780198835691
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This interdisciplinary volume explores core emerging themes in the study of early modern literary-diplomatic relations, developing essential methods of analysis and theoretical approaches that will shape future research in the field. Contributions focus on three intimately related areas: the impact of diplomatic protocol on literary production; the role of texts in diplomatic practice, particularly those that operated as ‘textual ambassadors’; and the impact of changes in the literary sphere on diplomatic culture. The literary sphere held such a central place because it gave diplomats the tools to negotiate the pervasive ambiguities of diplomacy; simultaneously literary depictions of diplomacy and international law provided genre-shaped places for cultural reflection on the rapidly changing and expanding diplomatic sphere. Translations exemplify the potential of literary texts both to provoke competition and to promote cultural convergence between political communities, revealing the existence of diplomatic third spaces in which ritual, symbolic, or written conventions and semantics converged despite particular oppositions and differences. The increasing public consumption of diplomatic material in Europe illuminates diplomatic and literary communities, and exposes the translocal, as well as the transnational, geographies of literary-diplomatic exchanges. Diplomatic texts possessed symbolic capital. They were produced, archived, and even redeployed in creative tension with the social and ceremonial worlds that produced them. Appreciating the generic conventions of specific types of diplomatic texts can radically reshape our interpretation of diplomatic encounters, just as exploring the afterlives of diplomatic records can transform our appreciation of the histories and literatures they inspired.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close