ON POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES: SUMMARISING THE RESEARCH FIELD AND ITS THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Communicating means taking part in an exchange of information. Of necessity, communicating is an intersubjective practice that involves the participation of a sender and a receiver, both of whom make sense of and give meaning to the act of communicating. Political communication, the topic of this work, seeks to create or use a public space in order to communicate with the public, who participates in the two dimensions of the communicational act. Through this, political communication affects the public conception of politics and the political order - local or otherwise - in which the public either takes part, complains about, revolts against or confirms, reinforces, legitimises or delegitimises. Rumours and gossip, speeches and subversive songs, pamphlets, flyers and libels, posters, drawings, and political poems are all oral or written forms of communication. In this study, we shall examine the theoretical foundations and practice of political communication, focusing on the medieval period and, particularly, on Castile1.