Treason by Words

Rebecca Lemon is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

It may be that, as the republican theorists of Ancient Rome and Early Modern England understood, tyranny does not consist in an overly rigid enforcement of the law, but on the replacement of the objective laws of logic by arbitrary laws such as those of the marketplace, individual whim, or mere fiction. When this happens, rhetoric becomes a legal matter, certain kinds of statement become criminal, and the notion of 'treason by words' gains new currency. Treason by Words examines the consequences of such a development. Its analysis is incisive and its warnings timely.(Times Literary Supplement) Lemon points out that the arguments in favor of Richard II's deposition that Hayward puts into the mouth of the Archbishop of Canterbury echo the arguments for Elizabeth's deposition. Lemon indicates how the controversy surrounding Haywards's subsequent prosecution produced competing definitions of treason and sovereignty. Lemon's book provides valuable New Historical leverage on how early modern English writers dealt with the problem of treason and tyranny, a problem becoming familiar again.(Renaissance Quarterly)