Authorship and Authority in Early Modern Spain

This seminar offers a panoramic view of early modern Spanish literature and book history through the study of both canonical and less frequently read works. With a focus on questions of authorship and authority, we will read poetry, prose, and drama in relation to the material and social conditions of their production and reception, considering how competing arenas of patronage, the emergence of a commercial market for books and plays, and, perhaps paradoxically, legal and ideological constraints helped shape a literary culture of exceptional productivity and inventiveness whose influence extended across Europe and into the Americas.