Handwritten Worlds of Early Modern England

FAIN: EH-50021-04

Folger Shakespeare Library admin by Trustees of Amherst College (Washington, DC 20003-1004)
Kathleen Lynch (Project Director: March 2004 to March 2009)

A six-week summer institute for sixteen college teachers to incorporate the study of manuscript sources into the study of English literature and culture from 1400 to 1700.

The proposed six-week institute for college faculty reinscribes the vibrancy of manuscript cultures into the literary, social, and cultural histories of early modern England. It synthesizes a critical mass of recent scholarship to produce fresh examinations of the nature and status of manuscript evidence for college classrooms. Working with important archival materials, participants will attend to bibliographical description, the identification of scribal hands, the economics of trade, and the stages of transmission to account for such issues as authorship, originality, intellectual property, the associations of gender with particular kinds of writing, and distinctions between public and private, and amateur and professional in the period.