pamphleteering, origins of
pamphleteering, origins of.The word ‘pamphlet’ appears to derive, curiously, from the generalized use of the title of a popular 12th-cent. Latin love poem called Pamphilus, seu de Amore, which was adapted to ‘Pamphilet’. Orwell , in his introduction to British Pamphleteers (vol. i, 1948 ), describes a pamphlet as ‘a short piece of polemical writing, printed in the form of a booklet and aimed at a large public’, usually of 5,000–10,000 words, and without hard covers. Pamphleteering may be said to have started with the Reformation, and during the 16th cent. became widespread (see Nashe , Dekker , and Martin Marprelate ); J. Knox 's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment (i.e. ‘government’) of Women ( 1558 ) was perhaps the first British political pamphlet. In the 17th cent. the religious and political ferment that gave rise to the Civil War produced many thousands of pamphlets,...
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