On the Importance of Experiencing Political Texts

In this episode of New Work in Intellectual History, Prof Rachel Hammersley outlines how authors of early-modern political texts made use of literary elements to facilitate their readers’ understanding of the political concepts introduced by the texts. Along her most recent publications James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography (2019, Oxford University Press), and Republicanism: An Introduction (2020, Polity Press), Rachel explains how early-modern political texts were “experienced” by their readership at the time, in which ways their authors facilitated this experience and what implications this perspective has for our understanding of the past and for the discipline of Intellectual History. 

Prof Rachel Hammersley teaches Intellectual History at Newcastle University. Her work has largely focused on how political concepts such as republicanism, democracy, and revolution were understood, disseminated to new audiences and transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in Britain and France.