Republikanische Träume von der Macht

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During the English Revolution the concept of utopia became a part of everyday political language and was used in the rhetorical battles between political actors. Utopian language and utopian thought was no longer a prerogative of humanist scholars but infiltrated genres like political speeches and pamphlets, the newsbooks, religious and scientific treatises. Saracinos book analyzes these genres as well as the (in a stricter sense) utopian descriptions of fictional commonwealths, which flourished during the 1640s, 1650s and 1660s. The special emphasize lies on the use made of the utopian genre by authors and speakers with a republican commitment. In four case studies Saracino reconstructs the use of utopian textforms and utopian speech-acts during the Long Parliament, under Cromwell's rule, after the collaps of the protectorate and the restitution of parliamentary government in September 1659 and finally in the years after the Restoration of the Stuart-monarchy. The book tells the story of a symbiosis between utopian and republican political thought and political language, which led to varying outcomes, e.g. the construction of a republican tradition in the monarchically dominated political culture of early modern England, the satirical communication with rulers (like Cromwell oder Charles II) as well as the anticipation of the modern state. Saracino pleads for a three-dimensional understanding of utopia as a textform, as a practice as well as a speech-act and argues that utopian republicanism during the English Revolution as well as afterwarts oscillated between the opposition and apology of existing political power.