Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The Carolina penal code of 1532, issued as a manual of court procedures for the Holy Roman Empire, offers an opportunity to examine connections between the legal text and broader cultural discourses. The code uses persuasive techniques that promote a vision of the rational layman as the exemplar of common sense and public order. The representations of the legal text parallel contemporary tendencies in fiction and pamphlet literature. Both authoritative and literary texts used print to promote identification with a universalized ideal, limited by class and gender but discursively constructed as common to all reasonable people.
Research for this article was supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Rowan University. My thanks also to: Max Reinhart and Tom Robisheaux for generously commenting on early drafts of this work; Gerald Strauss and an anonymous reader for Renaissance Quarterly; Amy Burnett, Mickey Smith, and participants in sessions at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference and the Rowan Professional Conference.