This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Printing was first undertaken in Europe in 1439, it was introduced to England in the 1470s, and arrived in Scotland in 1508. The impact of the printing press on the flow of information was one of the most significant innovations of the early modern period. However, more recently, scholars have argued that this new technology needs to be understood in the context of continuity of oral culture and a market for manuscript circulation of texts which remained thriving until the eighteenth century. This course will introduce MA students to the complexities of the circulation of news and ideas in early modern Europe. In so doing it will introduce them to a particular areas of scholarship (such as book history or the public sphere) and provide them with essential information for approaching primary source materials (e.g., practical knowledge of the limitations and strengths of the English Stationer's Register). Whilst primary source materials and secondary reading will be provided in English, because the book trade and news market were international, this course will cover other European contexts and so be of use to students with either British or European research interests. Moreover, concerns surrounding the movement of texts and ideas are of the essence for scholars in faculties of both literature and history, as such, the module will be naturally interdisciplinary and so suited to students with interests in both History and English.
1 x 2 hour seminar each week
100% Coursework (1 x 5,000 word essay)
Bawcutt, Priscilla, 'Crossing the Border: Scottish Poetry and English Readers in the Sixteenth Century', in Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood (eds), The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (East Linton, 1998), pp. 59-76.
Blomendall, Jan, Arjan Van Dixhoorn & Elsa Streitman, Literary Cultures and Public Opinions in the Low Countries 1450-1650 (Leiden, 2011)
Fox, Adam, 'Religious Satire in English Towns, 1570-1640', in Patrick Collinson and John Craig (eds) The Reformation in the English Towns 1550-1640 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 221-40.
Lake, Peter and Steve Pincus (eds), The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007)
Love, Harold, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993)
Pollmann, Judith, and Andrew Spicer (eds), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands (Leiden, 2007)
Scott-Warren, Jason, ‘Reconstructing Manuscript Networks: The Textual Transmissions of Stephen Powle’, in Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester, 2000), pp. 18-38.
Woudhuysen, H.R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558-1640 (Oxford, 1996)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1) Demonstrate a systematic understanding of the circulation of news and information in early modern Europe.
2) Show a sophisticated critical awareness of the problems in distinguishing too closely between the media in which information flowed (printed text, manuscripts, and the spoken word).
3) Critically evaluate the existing scholarly literature on these subjects across disciplines with reference to the interrogation of primary sources to suggest original approaches to historical or literary problems.
4) Have a sophisticated understanding of the issues of censorship and state control of information, and critically evaluate how this affected the use of various media and source survival.
5) Have a comprehensive understanding of the international nature of the early modern information market and how information networks overlapped and intersected at a local, national, and international level.
6) Demonstrate a sophisticated critical awareness of the problems surrounding the measurement of literacy, and critically interrogate implications which different methods of measurement have both for the study of literacy and assessing the impact and reach of differing source materials.
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