Books by Massimo Rospocher
La tendenza degli studi recenti di storia della comunicazione è stata quella di considerare la va... more La tendenza degli studi recenti di storia della comunicazione è stata quella di considerare la varietà, la coesistenza e la natura sistemica dei media nella società moderna e contemporanea. Termini come media system, ecosistema dei media o media ensemble sono così diventati familiari per gli storici. Un ulteriore passaggio, rispetto a questa concezione multimediale della comunicazione, si è verificato più recentemente. Forse anche come riflesso della società mediatica in cui viviamo, dominata da forme di comunicazione sempre più ibride, la comunicazione non viene più rappresentata solo come un universo multimediale – dove stampa, manoscritto, oralità, musica, performance, immagini, suoni e video coesistono –, ma piuttosto come un ecosistema intermediale – all’interno del quale i media interagiscono spesso sovrapponendosi, modificandosi o sostituendosi l’uno con l’altro. Il concetto di intermedialità non appare più oggi solo un ostico neologismo ma comincia a essere impiegato ‘sul campo’ dagli storici. Nel presente volume studiosi dell’età moderna e contemporanea utilizzano questo concetto come chiave di lettura per interpretare fenomeni sociali, politici e culturali, fornendo una serie di esempi di applicazioni concrete di un approccio intermediale alla comunicazione in diversi ambiti storiografici.
Looking back over the centuries, migration has always formed an important part of human existence... more Looking back over the centuries, migration has always formed an important part of human existence. Spatial mobility emerges as a key driver of urban evolution, characterized by situation-specific combinations of opportunities, restrictions, and fears. This collection of essays investigates interactions between European cities and migration between the early modern period and the present. Building on conceptual approaches from history, sociology, and cultural studies, twelve contributions focus on policies, representations, and the impact on local communities more generally.
Combining case-studies and theoretical reflections, the volume’s contributions engage with a variety of topics and disciplinary perspectives yet also with several common themes. One revolves around problems of definition, both in terms of demarcating cities from their surroundings and of distinguishing migration in a narrower sense from other forms of short- and long-distance mobility. Further shared concerns include the integration of multiple analytical scales, contextual factors, and diachronic variables (such as urbanization, industrialization, and the digital revolution).
This volume explores the challenges and possibilities of research into the European dimensions of... more This volume explores the challenges and possibilities of research into the European dimensions of popular print culture.
Popular print culture has traditionally been studied with a national focus. Recent research has revealed, however, that popular print culture has many European dimensions and shared features. A group of specialists in the field has started to explore the possibilities and challenges of research on a wide, European scale. This volume contains the first overview and analysis of the different approaches, methodologies and sources that will stimulate and facilitate future comparative research.
This volume first addresses the benefits of a media-driven approach, focussing on processes of content recycling, interactions between text and image, processes of production and consumption. A second perspective illuminates the distribution and markets for popular print, discussing audiences, prices and collections. A third dimension refers to the transnational dimensions of genres, stories, and narratives. A last perspective unravels the communicative strategies and dynamics behind European bestsellers.
This book is a source of inspiration for everyone who is interested in research into transnational cultural exchange and in the fascinating history of popular print culture in Europe.
La notte tra il 20 e il 21 febbraio 1513 la morte pone fine al decennale pontificato di Giulio II... more La notte tra il 20 e il 21 febbraio 1513 la morte pone fine al decennale pontificato di Giulio II Della Rovere, figura cardine del papato rinascimentale, di cui incarna la grandiosità e le contraddizioni. La popolazione romana gli tributò un omaggio senza precedenti: «da quarant’anni che vivo in questa città non ho mai visto una folla così straordinaria al mortorio di un papa», racconta il cerimoniere pontificio Paride de’ Grassi.
Come sovrano pontefice, politico spregiudicato e sommo mecenate Giulio II rimane uno dei personaggi che maggiormente condizionano l’immaginario collettivo del Rinascimento. Ma quale fu l’immagine che ne ebbero i contemporanei (non solo gli uomini di lettere, i prelati e i professionisti della politica, ma anche il popolo urbano del primo ‘500)?
Questo libro risponde a tale domanda ricostruendo l’immagine di Giulio II nella sfera pubblica e nella comunicazione politica in vari contesti italiani ed europei (Bologna, Ferrara, Roma, Venezia, Londra e Parigi). Intrecciando i racconti dei cantastorie con i dispacci dei diplomatici, le voci e le canzoni di piazza con i trattati degli umanisti, si delinea un ritratto inedito del ‘papa guerriero’, una rappresentazione in perenne oscillazione tra laude e vituperio, tra guerra e beatitudine.
One of the most significant aspects of recent historiography on war has been the attention paid t... more One of the most significant aspects of recent historiography on war has been the attention paid to the cultural images of conflict: the visual representation and its memory, language, and rhetoric. This approach has brought new attention to ways of representing war and the languages used to recount it. This collection of essays contributes to the historiographical debate focusing on two paradigmatic periods. The First World War is usually seen as marking a new era; the unusual nature of this conflict’s violence and the mechanization of death signal the end of war as a place for generating masculine honor. However, also other moments in the history of Western culture saw the paradigm of war change in the accounts and narratives of contemporaries. Among these, the crucial period of the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century, when the image of war shifted from a theater of conflict between noble-chivalric heroes to the encounters of anonymous armies. In this book, leading North American and European scholars turn their attention to discourses and narratives—without neglecting the reality of war and its dramatic effects on the civilian population—in order to understand when and in what form the Western war narrative’s capacity to generate individual and collective valor began to decline.
"Half a century ago Jürgen Habermas published his seminal work Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit ... more "Half a century ago Jürgen Habermas published his seminal work Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1962–2012), in which he formalized his ideal-typical model of the public sphere.
The influence of the Habermasian paradigm in the following decades has been such that it has given rise to an autonomous interdisciplinary field of study, bringing together historians, literary scholars, political scientists, and philosophers.
For fifty years Habermas's theory has been the catalyst for the historiographical debate about public opinion and has been recognized as an interpretative paradigm of the development of Western modernity.
Despite the heralding of a post-Habermas era; despite the fact that some historians have mused over a possible – and in the minds of a few even desirable – total eclipse of the Habermasian doctrine; Habermas's model still boasts a significant scholarly vitality. Many answers that the German philosopher supplied have turned out to be inaccurate, but for historians the bigger questions that he posed remain relevant: how – and when – was the critical power of public discussion born? How are «the public» and «public spaces» defined? What is the relationship between public discourse and authority? What, ultimately, is the power of communication?
Inspired by the fundamental question of the relationship between power and communication, the current research paths explored by historians of the Ancien régime have consolidated the critical dialectic with this analytical paradigm, but at the same time have led in a direction that goes beyond the public sphere.
This volume combines empirical research on early modern Europe with the most recent theoretical approaches in the historiography of political communication. Leading North American and European scholars in the field engage critically with this fundamental concept of political modernity and present a new way of thinking about early modern politics."
Reviewed in American Historical Review; Cromhos; Francia; European History Quarterly; European Review of History; Historische Zeitschrift; Journal of Early Modern History; Renaissance Quarterly; Renaissance Studies; Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine; Revue Historique; Storicamente.
La nascita dell'opinione pubblica è un aspetto fondamentale nello sviluppo della modernità occide... more La nascita dell'opinione pubblica è un aspetto fondamentale nello sviluppo della modernità occidentale; per la messa fuoco di questo tema ha avuto un ruolo decisivo l'opera di Jürgen Habermas sulla "sfera pubblica" uscita cinquant'anni or sono. Con una serie di originali contributi storici, il presente volume rimodula la tematica habermasiana nella convinzione che, se l'opera di Habermas è da considerarsi superata, siano tuttavia ancora fondamentali gli interrogativi che essa poneva: come nasce e qual è il potere della discussione pubblica? Qual è la relazione del discorso politico pubblico con l'autorità? Come si definiscono il pubblico e gli spazi pubblici? Qual è, in ultima istanza, la forza della comunicazione?
INDICE: - La voce della piazza. Oralità e spazio pubblico nell’Italia del Rinascimento, di Massimo Rospocher - Sfera pubblica o triangolo della comunicazione? Informazione e politica nella prima età moderna, di Filippo de Vivo - Opinioni silenziose. Per una storia della dimensione non discorsiva della sfera pubblica, di Sandro Landi - Lo Stato premoderno e l’ascesa della sfera pubblica. Un approccio fondato sulla teoria dei sistemi, di Andreas Gestrich Assolutezza del potere e nascita della sfera pubblica: critica di un modello, di Francesco Benigno - A proposito di «Öffentlichkeit» settecentesca. Una questione generale e un caso specifico, di Edoardo Tortarolo - Dallo spazio dell’opinione allo spazio della rappresentazione. Riflessioni sulla sfera pubblica nel XIX e XX secolo, di Paolo Pombeni
Journal Special Issues by Massimo Rospocher
The articles in this issue study the uses and importance of orality in a range of contexts: the s... more The articles in this issue study the uses and importance of orality in a range of contexts: the sung performance of poems in the piazza, language varieties on stage, the presentation of women’s speech in literary works, spoken and sung devotions, and preaching in the age of the Counter-Reformation.
The essays derive from a project, funded by the European Research Council, on Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy.
"the italianist", Volume 34, Issue 3, 2014, Sep 15, 2014
The articles in this issue study the uses and importance of orality in a range of contexts: the s... more The articles in this issue study the uses and importance of orality in a range of contexts: the sung performance of poems in the piazza, language varieties on stage, the presentation of women’s speech in literary works, spoken and sung devotions, and preaching in the age of the Counter-Reformation.
The essays derive from a project, funded by the European Research Council, on "Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy".
Articles by Massimo Rospocher
Over the past decades, in the fields of political history and the history of communication, there... more Over the past decades, in the fields of political history and the history of communication, there has been growing attention paid to the theatres of events and to the spaces where early modern communities came together, discussed news and politics, and exchanged opinions or information. Considering space as a social construct rather than a mere container, there has been increasing historical research on the agency of political space. 1 The spatial approach to political history has widened the analytical confines of political space and renewed the debate on the (post-Habermasian) public sphere. Early modern historians have focused not only on official or institutional political spaces such as palaces, town halls, or courtrooms, but also on 'informal or vernacular political spaces', 2 or 'third places' 3 such as places of social interaction including barbershops, public baths, markets or coffee houses. This new political topography includes ephemeral spaces, such as benches, bridges, gondolas or street corners, and built environments, such
Mobility, Print and Trade in Europe: The Case of the Tesini Pedlars (17th–19th Centuries)
European History Quarterly, 2024
This article focuses on the itinerant print trade that actively involved the Alpine Tesini pedlar... more This article focuses on the itinerant print trade that actively involved the Alpine Tesini pedlars for more than three centuries (between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries) and that profoundly influenced the cultural, social, and economic history of their home valley. The case study of the pedlars from the Tesino valley, in what is now the Trentino region of Northern Italy, offers a privileged perspective for analysing three interrelated broader questions: the dynamics and effects of mobility in Ancien Régime Alpine societies; the spread of cheap print in pre-modern Europe; and the economic system underlying this large-scale trade. Through the analysis of a corpus of previously overlooked notarial sources, this article aims to unravel the complex financial and credit mechanisms that enabled the Tesini pedlars to succeed, but which in many cases were also the cause of their downfall.
Urban History, 2023
In Renaissance Italy, the political power of authorities found one of its expressions in material... more In Renaissance Italy, the political power of authorities found one of its expressions in material symbols of sovereignty. The placing of inscriptions, sculptures and columns and the commissioning of frescoes in streets, piazzas and public spaces, for example, were essential ways of communicating political or spiritual authority to the populace. Sometimes perceived as representations of a top-down form of communication, in the urban context these same material emblems of power became political objects through which to express dissent, as in the case of public loggias, speaking statues or graffiti on walls and civic palaces. Presenting case-studies from various cities in northern Italy, this article investigates the dialectics between the people and the authorities in the urban fabric, especially in everyday life. Combining a spatial and a material approach to politics, this article reveals the dynamic and relational nature of political public spaces.
Contending Representations II: Entangled Republican Spaces in Early Modern Venice, 2024
Digital Roots. Historicizing media and communication concepts of the digital age, 2021
Network is one of the most symbolic and obsessively repeated keywords in digital literacy. But ne... more Network is one of the most symbolic and obsessively repeated keywords in digital literacy. But networks are obviously not exclusively digital. In Ancient Rome, transportation networks were built and maintained to link a dispersed and immense empire. Postal networks were crucial in the early modern period to foster communications and acted as a premodern info-structure. Electric telegraphy, telephony, and then wireless allowed instantaneous communication from the nineteenth century, changing the sense of speed and place, and acting as info-structure for nascent train and plane systems. The word network was then applied to radio and TV in the twentieth century. After an overview of what we call digital network studies, this chapter aims to historicize and deconstruct the arguments surrounding networks in a long-term perspective, highlighting continuities and changes over time. We will focus specifically on two dimensions: networks as infrastructures and networks as socio-cultural tools to build communities.
Cheiron, 2021
Despite its current ubiquity in many academic fields, the notion of intermediality is hardly new ... more Despite its current ubiquity in many academic fields, the notion of intermediality is hardly new and the awareness of medial interdependence has been a commonplace that goes back at least as far as classical Antiquity. The introduction to this special issue examines the long (and sometimes ambiguous) history of the relationships and the interactions between written and spoken words, pictures, sound, music and performance. In this context, we suggest a systemic approach to media and communication history that moves away from discussions of the relative influence of one medium at the expense of another and instead considers patterns of interaction, interactivity and complementarity between them. After an overview of various definitions and theoretical approaches, we focus on intermedia objects, practices and actors in order to illuminate the dynamics of early modern intermediality.
Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico, 2019
Crossing Borders, Crossing Cultures Popular Print in Europe (1450–1900), 2019
Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte, 2018
Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 2018
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Books by Massimo Rospocher
Combining case-studies and theoretical reflections, the volume’s contributions engage with a variety of topics and disciplinary perspectives yet also with several common themes. One revolves around problems of definition, both in terms of demarcating cities from their surroundings and of distinguishing migration in a narrower sense from other forms of short- and long-distance mobility. Further shared concerns include the integration of multiple analytical scales, contextual factors, and diachronic variables (such as urbanization, industrialization, and the digital revolution).
Popular print culture has traditionally been studied with a national focus. Recent research has revealed, however, that popular print culture has many European dimensions and shared features. A group of specialists in the field has started to explore the possibilities and challenges of research on a wide, European scale. This volume contains the first overview and analysis of the different approaches, methodologies and sources that will stimulate and facilitate future comparative research.
This volume first addresses the benefits of a media-driven approach, focussing on processes of content recycling, interactions between text and image, processes of production and consumption. A second perspective illuminates the distribution and markets for popular print, discussing audiences, prices and collections. A third dimension refers to the transnational dimensions of genres, stories, and narratives. A last perspective unravels the communicative strategies and dynamics behind European bestsellers.
This book is a source of inspiration for everyone who is interested in research into transnational cultural exchange and in the fascinating history of popular print culture in Europe.
Come sovrano pontefice, politico spregiudicato e sommo mecenate Giulio II rimane uno dei personaggi che maggiormente condizionano l’immaginario collettivo del Rinascimento. Ma quale fu l’immagine che ne ebbero i contemporanei (non solo gli uomini di lettere, i prelati e i professionisti della politica, ma anche il popolo urbano del primo ‘500)?
Questo libro risponde a tale domanda ricostruendo l’immagine di Giulio II nella sfera pubblica e nella comunicazione politica in vari contesti italiani ed europei (Bologna, Ferrara, Roma, Venezia, Londra e Parigi). Intrecciando i racconti dei cantastorie con i dispacci dei diplomatici, le voci e le canzoni di piazza con i trattati degli umanisti, si delinea un ritratto inedito del ‘papa guerriero’, una rappresentazione in perenne oscillazione tra laude e vituperio, tra guerra e beatitudine.
The influence of the Habermasian paradigm in the following decades has been such that it has given rise to an autonomous interdisciplinary field of study, bringing together historians, literary scholars, political scientists, and philosophers.
For fifty years Habermas's theory has been the catalyst for the historiographical debate about public opinion and has been recognized as an interpretative paradigm of the development of Western modernity.
Despite the heralding of a post-Habermas era; despite the fact that some historians have mused over a possible – and in the minds of a few even desirable – total eclipse of the Habermasian doctrine; Habermas's model still boasts a significant scholarly vitality. Many answers that the German philosopher supplied have turned out to be inaccurate, but for historians the bigger questions that he posed remain relevant: how – and when – was the critical power of public discussion born? How are «the public» and «public spaces» defined? What is the relationship between public discourse and authority? What, ultimately, is the power of communication?
Inspired by the fundamental question of the relationship between power and communication, the current research paths explored by historians of the Ancien régime have consolidated the critical dialectic with this analytical paradigm, but at the same time have led in a direction that goes beyond the public sphere.
This volume combines empirical research on early modern Europe with the most recent theoretical approaches in the historiography of political communication. Leading North American and European scholars in the field engage critically with this fundamental concept of political modernity and present a new way of thinking about early modern politics."
Reviewed in American Historical Review; Cromhos; Francia; European History Quarterly; European Review of History; Historische Zeitschrift; Journal of Early Modern History; Renaissance Quarterly; Renaissance Studies; Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine; Revue Historique; Storicamente.
INDICE: - La voce della piazza. Oralità e spazio pubblico nell’Italia del Rinascimento, di Massimo Rospocher - Sfera pubblica o triangolo della comunicazione? Informazione e politica nella prima età moderna, di Filippo de Vivo - Opinioni silenziose. Per una storia della dimensione non discorsiva della sfera pubblica, di Sandro Landi - Lo Stato premoderno e l’ascesa della sfera pubblica. Un approccio fondato sulla teoria dei sistemi, di Andreas Gestrich Assolutezza del potere e nascita della sfera pubblica: critica di un modello, di Francesco Benigno - A proposito di «Öffentlichkeit» settecentesca. Una questione generale e un caso specifico, di Edoardo Tortarolo - Dallo spazio dell’opinione allo spazio della rappresentazione. Riflessioni sulla sfera pubblica nel XIX e XX secolo, di Paolo Pombeni
Journal Special Issues by Massimo Rospocher
The essays derive from a project, funded by the European Research Council, on Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy.
The essays derive from a project, funded by the European Research Council, on "Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy".
Articles by Massimo Rospocher