| In this course we will explore technologies of reading in early modern England. In the first part of the course we will consider the materials of reading (scrolls, codices, script, print, type, glosses, indices) and ask how these materials might shape the ways readers attend to texts. We will then turn to historically specific methods of engaging with the written (humanist, Christian, literary) in order to better understand the strategies and purposes of early modern reading. We will not only discuss the work of scholars concerned with the history of the book and the history of reading (Chartier, Eisenstein, Grafton), but will also take up scholarship addressing the history of hermeneutics and exegesis (Cave, Derrida, Ricoeur). Early modern writers we will address will include Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Marlowe, Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Spenser. |
