Courses

The early modern period is often heralded as the age of print, when new ideas were disseminated by the press on a grander scale than ever before.  But it was also still very much a world in which many texts were written by hand, circulated and copied in manuscript, with their own distinctive culture.  This graduate seminar is designed to introduce students to important features of the manuscript culture of early modern England (roughly 1550-1700) with an emphasis on literary and para-literary genres.  Its focus will be a series of case studies in various aspects of manuscript culture – genres (letters, libels, playbooks, verse), material means of collecting (letterbooks, miscellanies) and dissemination and conservation (scribal publication, copying, filing and archiving).  A basic training in paleography of the period will be provided.  The course will make use primarily of electronic resources to which Columbia has subscriptions (including Perdita, Luna, British Literary Manuscripts Online, The Cecil Papers, State Papers Online, etc.) with some work with the holdings of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  Each week will feature a case study, featuring (among others) writings by Philip Sidney, John Donne, Hester Pulter, and John Milton.