ENGL-3347 The History of the Book

This course introduces students to some of the major stages in the history of the book through the seventeenth century, and to the question of how changes in this technology responded to, caused, reflected, or were otherwise related to changes in the texts these books contain. We approach the book in its entirety, examining (for example) changes in the construction and preparation of pages, new technologies for binding, and the invention of the printing press, as well as changes in scripts used to copy texts and strategies for reading these sometimes quite alien graphic signifiers. And we will consider, throughout, what careful attention to texts in their various material instantiations can offer to the study of literary history. Corequisite: ENGL 3161 or CLAS 3161