From Propaganda to the Denial of Free Speech: Politics and the Misuse of Language in Elizabethan England in the Writings of Anglo-Dutch Polemicist Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses Anglo-Dutch recusant polemicist and publisher Richard Verstegan’s concern with the misuse of language and its impact on society, reflected in his religious–polemical publications. An analysis of pamphlets ascribed to Verstegan reveals that he acknowledged the existence of a close link between the misuse of power in Elizabethan England and the misuse of language. The former impacted linguistic communication through the foisting on English society of propaganda based on deliberate disinformation, and through the limiting of free speech. In his pamphlets, Verstegan used elements of mystification characteristic of the convention of ‘epistolary fiction’. In the final part of this article, therefore, an answer is provided to the question whether such a literary strategy may be classified as a form of misuse of language.