Secrecy and the King’s Power: Concealment and Revelation in the 17th-Century England
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The imperative of arcana imperii had been an integral part in the debate on the art of governance in early modern period especially in relation to the theory of absolutism. According the ideas, secrecy propels the image of sanctity of the throne and enhances the efficiency of the government. By examining the writings and speeches of Stuart kings, polemical publications during the English Civil War and the emergence of the “secret history” genre in 17th-century England, this article argues that the notion of secrecy became a paradoxical and often controversial subject in English politics in such a turbulent time. This article also argues that the popularity of secret-revealing literature was a precursor to the emergence of the public sphere in literary aspect. This obsession of political transparency and the need to abolish arcana imperii intensified in the 18th century.
Downloads
Article Details
References
Bentham, J. (1834). Deontology; or the Science of Morality. In Which the Harmony and Coincidence of Duty and Self-Interest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence Are Explained. Edited by John Bowring. London: Longman & Co.
Bentham, J. (1843). The Works of Jeremy Bentham Volume 2. Edited by John Bowring. Edinburgh: William Tait.
Birkinshaw, P. (2010). Freedom of Information : The Law, the Practice and the Ideal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bobbio, N., & Viroli, M. (2003). The Idea of the Republic. Cambridge: Polity.
Bullard, R. (2009). The Politics of Disclosure, 1674-1725 : Secret History Narratives. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Charles I, King of England. (1645). The Kings Cabinet Opened: Or, Certain Packets of Secret Letters & Papers, Written with the Kings Own Hand, and Taken in His Cabinet at Nasby-Field, June 14. 1645. By Victorious Sr Thomas Fairfax; Wherein Many Mysteries of State ... Are Clearly Laid Open; Together, with Some Annotations Thereupon. Edited by Henry Parker, Thomas May and John Sadler. London: Printed for Robert Bostock.
de Groot, J. (2004). Royalist Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fischlin, D., & Fortier, M. (Eds). (2002). Royal Subjects : Essays on the Writings of James VI and I. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Gestrich, A. (1994). Absolutismus Und Offentlichkeit : Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland Zu Beginn Des 18. Jahrhunderts. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Goldberg, J. (1983). James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and Their Contempories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity.
James I, King of England. (1918). The Political Works of James I. Edited by Charles Howard McIlwain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
______. (1887). Basilikon Doron, or His Majestys Instructions to His Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince. London: Wertheimer, Lea & Co.
Jütte, D. (2015). The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400-1800. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Kantorowicz, E.H. (1955). "Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins. The Harvard Theological Review, 48(1), 65-91.
Kantorowicz, E.H. (1957). The King's Two Bodies; a Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mcllwain, C.H. (1918). The Political Works of James I. Cambridge: Harvard Univesity Press.
Mondi, M. (2007). The Speeches and Self-Fashioning of King James VI and I to the English Parliament, Constructing the Past, 8(1), 1604-1624.
Morrill, J. S., Slack, P., Woolf, D.R., & Aylmer, G.E. (Eds). (1993). Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G.E. Aylmer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Neocleous, M. (2003). Imagining the State. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Parsons, N. (2009). Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Balsingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sharpe, K., & Lake, P. (Eds). (1994). Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Sharpe, K. (2013). Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England. London: Bloomsbury.
Tuck, R. (1993). Philosophy and Government, 1572 - 1651. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Viroli, M. (1992). From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics, 1250 - 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weber, M, (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by Hans Heinrich Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.
Zwicker, S.N. (1993). Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
