Affiliation:
1. Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Abstract
Owing to the propaganda campaign which accompanied the actual
military campaign of the Invincible Armada against England in 1588 and
which was employed very consciously by both belligerent parties, a huge
amount of sources has come down to us representing a wide variety of genres
from ballads to spy letters and from paintings to coins. The topic of the
paper is the analysis of a single news pamphlet containing a detailed list
regarding the size and the equipment of the fleet as well as the names of
the most important participants. These data were gathered and recorded at
the muster of the Spanish Armada held in Lisbon in May 1588, and
consequently quickly published and distributed throughout Europe. The paper
examines both the content and the form of the pamphlet. What was the point
of publishing and distributing such a rather dull text full of numbers and
data? What kind of readership might it have been interesting to and what
could they learn from it? And finally, what was the significance and
function of using the form of the list?
Subject
Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering,Metals and Alloys,Strategy and Management,Mechanical Engineering