Celebrating, Interpreting, and Spreading News: Nicaise Ladam and Publishing Topical Poetry in the Southern Low Countries (1508-1522)

Abstract

Between 1508 and 1522, the Burgundian author Nicaise Ladam produced three pieces of topical poetry that not only circulated in manuscript form, but were published in five different editions. They each deal with a single contemporary event: a peace treaty, the imperial election of Charles V and the siege of Rhodes by the Ottomans. As such, they belong to a larger corpus of texts dealing with the news, but they have a different status from the majority of them, as topical poetic pieces that presented both news and Ladam’s own commentary. Analysing the books in which these poems were printed allows us to study the communication strategies of their author and his publishers, and their possible impact on the audiences they addressed. Seen in this light, Ladam’s poetry and the context of its publication offers intriguing evidence of how news was interpreted and celebrated in the early sixteenth century