ENGL 6171

The Archaeology of the Text from Chaucer through the Renaissance

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

This seminar explores the relation between book history and literary history during the span from medieval English manuscript culture through Renaissance print culture, with invitations to apply these concerns to any period and language. Skills taught are both theoretical and practical, focusing on manuscripts, old handwriting, literacy, printers, and issues linking material and social book-making to literary topics and forms. As a class, we will focus on the pivotal period of English literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, but individual final editorial projects can take up any period or language. All students will learn to exploit chance archival discoveries, to write biographies of an early printer, and to use and create an edition.

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