Department of English

This course focuses upon the making, remaking, dissemination, and reading of texts in early modern Europe and America. Topics will include: practices of reading; learning to write; the constitution of authorship; the interaction of printing and manuscript; the economics of printing and publishing; the transatlantic book trade. Texts for the course will include: Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis and 1 and 2 Henry IV; Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Alexander Pope, The Dunciad; Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography; the Constitution of the United States.