Mattison, Julia
TR 12:45 PM
Park Hall 0269
Tudor Literature looks at the way that literature, in its material forms in manuscript and print, were composed, circulated, copied, collected, and read in early modern England. During this period, the production and status of books changed as printed books flooded the market, while the English Reformation brought the written word under new scrutiny. In this evolving cultural and social context, the relationship between material books and the literature they transmitted was dynamic. How did readers imagine the status of their books? How did writers achieve a reading public? Drawing on the literature of the period, including the works of William Caxton, John Skelton, Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Anne Askew, Margaret Roper, and Edmund Spenser, as well as contextualising historical sources, this course examines books and their texts as literary, social, and cultural objects.
Topics: transition from manuscripts to print, history of early printed books, paleography, translation, ideas of language, authorship, audience, gender and authorship, patronage, literary groups and circles
Readings (include, but not limited to):
William Caxton, translator's prologues
Stephen Hawes, The History of Graunde Amour and la Bel Pucel
John Skelton, Speke Parrot
Thomas Wyatt, short poetry
Thomas More, Utopia
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 3
Aemelia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Isabella Whitney, A Sweet Nosegay
William Shakespeare, Henry V
Peter Erondell, The French Garden
Queen Elizabeth I, short poetry
Sarah Werner, Studying Early Printed Books