This course provides an introduction to the historical turn in what is being called literary studies’ “post-theoretical moment.” (“Post-theoretical” not because we have dispensed with theory, but because we have internalized its lessons.) Rooted initially in Shakespearean bibliography in the 90s, literary-critical approaches to material texts and objects have flourished over the last decade under many names: book history, new materialism, new textualism, thing theory, queer philology, surface reading. Particularly in scholarship of the English Renaissance, the materiality and historicity of texts have become vital points of reference for some of the most exciting work on gender, sexuality, the environment, and recently, performance. We will survey these developments, taking up canonical texts from the age of Shakespeare as artifacts situated in time. We will focus not only or primarily on meaning, but on the conditions of meaning in the production, circulation, and reception of works. In addition to key secondary readings on materiality and factualism, we will explore three plays (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Beaumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle) and three works of poetry (Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and Lucrece). The course is designed to be narrow enough to introduce those in early-period fields to the “material text” in Shakespeare’s time but broad enough to engage anyone, from any period or field of literary study, who is interested in the theory and practice of historical work. Assignments will include an informal presentation, a close analysis of a book or document in Special Collections, and a conference-length paper to be delivered at a mock-symposium at the end of the term.



Textbooks: David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory (Routledge); Edmund Spenser, The Shorter Poems (Penguin); William Shakespeare, The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford); Hamlet: the Texts of 1603 and 1623 (Arden 3); Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus A- and B-Texts (Revels); Francis Beaumont, Knight of the Burning Pestle (Revels); and a course reader available at Ave Copy Center.