The Talk of the Town Information and Community in Sixteenth-Century Switzerland

The Talk of the Town explores everyday communication in a sixteenth-century small town and the role it played in the circulation of information across and within early modern communities. It does so through the lens of the St Gall linen trader Johannes Rütiner (1501-1556/7) and his notebooks, the Commentationes; a little-known source which offers unusual insights into an oral world normally hidden from view. A close reading of Rütiner's notes on hundreds of conversations reveals what the inhabitants of a sixteenth-century town talked about, through which channels such information reached them, and how it was then processed, shared, criticized, contradicted, and employed as a means to forge and strengthen social bonds. By bringing together the histories of sociability and information, reconstructing Ru?tiner's network of informants and probing a broad variety of exchanges-jokes, gossip, news, and tales of the past-Carla Roth rethinks both what constituted valuable information in the sixteenth century and who was able to provide it, and argues that the circulation of information remained inseparably linked to the social dynamics of face-to-face exchanges long into the age of print.

1 - Taking note of a 'wondrous time'
2 - Informants and networks
3 - Obscene humour and sociability
4 - Gossip and the value of social knowledge
5 - Rumour, news, and trust
6 - Tales of the past

Carla Roth is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Basle. She studied history at the University of Zurich and at Balliol College, University of Oxford, completing her DPhil in 2016. Her research focuses on the cultural and social history of early modern Switzerland.