ABSTRACT

Jacob Burckhardt sketched some parameters shaping early modern communication. His ideas were as speculative as they were suggestive. Even though they cannot be taken to mirror the past faithfully, they give an account of early modern communication which points in the right direction, as recent studies in rumour in the period suggest. Modern research, by contrast, tries to proceed deductively from minute observations on preserved material to modest conclusions. In a society so besieged by rumour, reflection on rumour and familiarity with authoritative views on it were more common than today. The concept of rumour received by Shakespeare can be traced to sources as old as the Gods of ancient Greece. The Romans gave rumour ethical and social connotations when they began to differentiate between bona fama and fama mala. The semantic change from concrete rumour to fame illustrated by early modern emblems and engravings. Everything perishes, says the writing on the pedestal in Hendrik Goltzius's engraving Fama and Historia.