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Books Above The Throne: Geopolitical And Technological Factors Exalting Textual Authority In Seventeenth-Century England, Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister

Actualization of the rule of law necessitates more than the enumeration of individual rights and the careful articulation of divided powers, but the presence of an information or media environment conducive to such rule. Specifically, in the case of seventeenth-century England, it is the ascendancy of the printed book, as characteristic of the information environment, that effectively establishes a limitation on royal power.

The article applies geopolitical, temporal, and technological factors of “media theory” to seventeenth-century England in order to understand the effects of the information environment upon legal institutions and government. It considers factors such as the textuality of …