• Login
• Admin

Wheddon, Rebecca (2024) Propaganda and persuasion: political discourse and the negotiation of power and authority in Yorkist and early Tudor England. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

PDF (Thesis With Corrections) (Thesis - as examined) - Repository staff only until 20 July 2026. Subsequently available to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Available under Licence Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB)

Abstract

The period 1471-1509 was one of the most tumultuous in English history. The fact that there were four different kings in thirteen years meant that the stability and authority of the English Crown were severely weakened. English kingship therefore had to adapt and discover new methods through which to negotiate and demonstrate its power and authority. One of the most significant of these was the use of propaganda and rhetoric, as the increased focus on public support and widening levels of literacy led to ever more emphasis on the importance of language. Using a language-based method of historical analysis, inspired by the ‘Linguistic Turn’ moment in historiography this thesis is the first in-depth examination of political language across an extended period of history. Its focus is on Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII, and how they used propaganda and rhetoric to negotiate and project power and authority.

The aim of the thesis therefore is to explore the extent to which the language-based analysis can be applied to a broad study of late fifteenth-century English kingship. As a method, it presents new and exciting possibilities for the examination of the later medieval period. As such, a central focus of this research is the assessment of the possible limits of the using language-based analysis to examine the past. There are three overall sections: establishing kingship, sustaining kingship and challenging kingship. Within each, the documents issued by Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII form case studies through which I will assess the conceptual framework within which the kings operated. By examining their language in this way, I will identify the levels of continuity and change in their rhetoric, and the ideas and concepts which were most important to each of them.

This thesis highlights the centrality of the concept of legitimacy to the language of Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII. In so doing it demonstrates the insecurity of the English Crown in the period 1471-1509. The in-depth analysis of the crown’s rhetoric in this period shows large levels of continuity in the language used by these three kings. This was due to the fact that they all operated within the same conceptual framework and so shared a corpus of words from which they derived their language. This study shows the ideas and concepts which were central to this period, and thus how each king sought to present themselves to their subjects. It highlights the importance of language as an instrument of power in this period, and how Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII were reliant on it to control the narrative and assert their power and authority.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Dodd, Gwilym Bothwell, James
Keywords:	political language, kingship, royal government, Wars of the Roses, late medieval England, linguistic turn
Subjects:	D History - General and Old World > DA Great Britain P Language and literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Arts > School of History
Item ID:	78244
Depositing User:	Wheddon, Rebecca
Date Deposited:	20 Jul 2024 04:40
Last Modified:	20 Jul 2024 04:40
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/78244

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View