Abstract

This paper deals with the so-called ‘Flugschrift’ (i. e. pamphlet) as a specific medial arrangement resp. form of communication in early modern age, which not only allowed a wide and rapid spread of popular texts, but also provided increased opportunities for follow-on communications and interactive debate. Interactivity is an essential dimension of invective communication. It is argued that the ‘Flugschriften’ afforded the escalative dynamics of invective, which shaped the early modern public sphere. These dynamics entailed furthermore distinctive connections and transformations of visual and rhetorical genres and practices in pamphlet literature. These correlations will be demonstrated by the examples of the Reuchlin-Pfefferkorn debate and Luthers invectives against the papal bull ‘Exsurge Domine’.