Books and the World of Early Modern England

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This invention of the printing press was, according to Francis Bacon, a technology that changed and altered the whole face and state of things throughout the world. In this course, we will read and examine a selection of books that are considered to have had a major impact on the literary and political culture of the Anglophone world. In each case, we consider the book in question as a material object and as a literary text. Syllabus will include More, Utopia; Bacon, Essays; Shakespeare, Hamlet and The Tempest; Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.