Abstract
The circulation of news emerged in Europe in the mid-1400s as a way of satisfying people’s curiosity and interest in events that had begun to become well known. Reports about travel, battles, miracles, discoveries, and natural and supernatural phenomena transitioned from the oral medium to manuscripts, while after the invention of the movable type press printed supports with added engravings became possible. Africa, Asia and Americas were incorporated. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the circulation of news became more intense, leading to the appearance of the first periodical publications called Mercuries and Gazettes. Nonetheless, manuscript news kept on circulating. Everywhere collectors of reports, notifications, and news created collections of miscellanea that deserve to be examined. Understanding this process allows reflection on new modalities of writing: briefer, more agile, and ephemeral, which were capable of providing information from afar, following the dynamics of travel and the circulation of people around the world. The new techniques for printing texts and images and the agility for distributing them are part of this movement, which, during Early Modern times, acquired further political and economic dimensions.
Keywords:
written culture; news circulation; early modern