. *have made it possible to trace a fairly precise map for the historical origin of this phenomenon. However, the scope of work carried out with a view to developing frameworks of interpretation to explain the reasons for this appearance is not as far-reaching. This paper reviews the recurring theoretical models found to date in the specific bibliography and proposes a new framework of interpretation, capable of encompassing the complexity and pan-European nature of early journalism in history. KEYWORDS journalism; Early Modern Europe; corantos; gazettes; historiographical revisionism Our knowledge of the backdrop against which journalism made its first historic appearance has received important contributions in recent years, through a significant volume of new data about the first newspapers published in Italy, England, the Netherlands, Germany. . ., as well as the social and communication networks into which they were inserted. 1 This abundance of factual information has not as of yet sparked interest among experts in attaining an understanding that would allow them to insert these data into an explanatory model. In our opinion, two recurrent confusions persist: the first, the frequent blurring between journalism and pre-journalism, which means that English news pamphlets or Spanish relaciones de sucesos are referred to as being both within the history of journalism and as an initial background chapter, even in the specialist bibliography. The second confusion, broader in its scope, hesitates over how to interpret, in a general historic tone, this appearance of journalism at the start of the Early Modern period. What is the decisive historic factor that explains the appearance, hic et nunc, of journalism: the emergence of the bourgeoisie or, in a very different sense, the consolidation of absolutist States? For most cultural historians, journalism and printing, journalism and bourgeoisie, appear as closely linked historical factors. Journalism is born in Europe with the awakening of the bourgeoisie at the end of the fifteenth century, which uses printing to contrive its attack on political power*although this took three long centuries*whilst at the same time getting rich from a product increasingly in demand among urban readerships. However, without discussing this general framework of interpretation, specialists in the History of Journalism superimpose onto the same a more precise chronology that

No abstract

In this paper we propose a methodological critique of the History of Early Modern Journalism. Our proposal recommends a review of the ‘micro’ concept applied to research in The History of Early Modern Journalism. The current study on the Gazeta de Roma in Valencia (1618–1620) is a sample of this microscopic procedure, and is an important and revealing example that enables us to reinterpret the concept of periodicity. We will discuss the value of periodicity as a demarcation. The contemporaries of the first European newspapers applied characteristics and criteria other than periodicity: a ‘newspaper’ was then a serial document that informed progressively about the news from a certain area at that time, the continuity of which was recognizable thanks to certain typographical resources, in the absence of the header concept.

© paul arblaster et al., ���6 | doi �0.��63/9789004�77�99_004 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0) License.

In this paper, the production of the Seville printer Juan de Cabrera and his contemporaries (second and third decades of the 17 th century) will be analysed to determine the strategies with which they managed to keep their readership supplied with news about international political developments (particularly about the War of Flanders): the use of the accounts of anonymous gazetteers -still unsubstantiated for this period -and the design innovations that allowed the serial nature of these publications to be recognised and which foreshadowed the elements typical of subsequent newspaper formats. To this end, old press collections, which have received scant attention hitherto, have been recovered in order to analyse the content and cover design of a corpus comprising 78 news publications printed by Juan de Cabrera in Seville during the first half of the 17 th century.