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Topics in History of the Book: Reading, Writing, Printing, & the Formation of the Self in the Renaissance

ENGL 234.401
instructor(s):
T 1:30-4:30

This course will focus on the interactions between reading and writing, stage and page, and manuscript and print in Renaissance England. We will explore what playwrights and poets actually did when they sat down to write and how their writing was reshaped by publishers, printers, and readers throughout the
seventeenth century. The primary texts for the course will be Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Richard II, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, the poetry of John Donne and
George Herbert, and the Bible. The seminar will make full use of the rare book collections at Penn and the Library Company of Philadelphia, as well as a wide
range of internet resources.

fulfills requirements