Folger MA Seminar

Spring 2011

Instructor

Professor Robert Matz
Department of English
George Mason University

Meeting Times

Fridays 11-12:20 pm and 3:20 – 4:30 pm

Classes

February 4
February 11
February 18
February 25
March 11
March 18
March 25
April 1
April 15
April 22
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Course Description

This course introduces students to issues, research methods, and sources in the study of early modern period.  It particularly emphasizes the opportunities and resources afforded by study at a rare book library such as the Folger.  Topics include the composition and design of early modern books, modes of publication and reading, finding and reading manuscripts and images, and both early modern and contemporary discursive fields.   Readings provide both practical guides for doing this research, and examples of how scholars have constructed arguments based on it.  Students will practice this research through a series of exercises based on one book that they will work with through the semester.  We will also work collaboratively, including construction a shared working bibliography for the course, which I hope will continue to be of use past the end of the course.

This course has a split-day schedule to allow for library work between discussions; most days will include work to be done in the library, either with rare materials or with the Folger’s large collection of modern scholarship on our period. You will need to be in the library all day on Fridays; lunch will have to be brief so you can have two hours of library time before the traditional Folger tea at 3pm.  

Assignments

The work for the course will include several assignments focused on a particular book, a historical exercise treating the subject of that book, and a short synthetic essay considering the range of evidence available for the study of your topic and the possibilities for future research.  Assignments will include:

1. Annotated bibliography on your category of books
   (assigned Feb 11, due Feb. 25)
2.  Communications circuit for your book
   (assigned Feb 18, due March 11)
3. Editions of your book
   (assigned Feb. 25, due March 18)
4. Bibliopgraphic essay charting major bibliographic resources and historiographic traditions relating to the subject of your book
   (assigned March 11, due April 1)
5. Choice of a) brief transcription of a manuscript relevant to your book or b) discussion of images and/ or paratextual elements of your book
   (assigned March 25, due April 15)
6. Short paper discussing the range of evidence available for work on your topic and possibilities for future research (6-8 pp.)
   (assigned April 1, due April 22)
   

Schedule

Feb. 4: Introduction: 

Readings

• http://www.zotero.org/support/ Read the guide from the beginning to the end of the section "Syncing, Collaboration and Backup"

Events
Before our first session: 

• Download Zotero (if you have problems, please let me know before we meet; I'm glad to help, but we will not spend class time on IT matters)
• Set up your private Zotero library and join our group library
•  Do the reading for Feb. 4

Morning: 

• Introductions
• Dr. Steven Galbraith on handling rare materials
• Selection of your book 

Library

• Lunch meeting with Dr. Georgianna Ziegler

Afternoon

• Folger Georgraphy: major bibliopgraphic references, locations and strategies

Feb. 11: History, Historiography and Books; Or, What's in a Rare Book Library?

Readings

• Grafton, Johns, and Eisenstein, "AHR Forum: How Revolutionary Was the Print Revolution"?, American Historical Review 107 (2002): 84-128
• Leah Marcus, Unediting The Renaissance: Shakespeare Marlowe and Milton (Routledge, 1996), 1-37
• Stallybrass, Chartier, and Wolfe, "Hamlet's Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England," Shakespeare Quarterly 55 (2004): 379-419.

Morning:

• Discuss Feb 11 readings
• Discuss sizing up the field

Library:

• Identify major bibliographic resources and major works for your subject

Afternoon:

• Discuss  library work

Feb. 18: Historical Bibliography: Writers, Readers, Publishers, Patrons

Readings

•  Required
• Robert Darton, "What is the History of Books?," Daedalus 111.3 (Summer 1982): 65-83.
• Arthur Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Cornell, 1995), Chapter 5
• Recommended
• Richard Altick, The English Common Reader; a Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (University of Chicago Press, 1967), Chapter 1
  
• Nigel Wheale, Writing and Society: Literacy, Print, and Politics in Britain, 1590-1660 (Routledge, 1999), Chapter 4.
  
• Kirk Melnikoff. "Jones's Pen and Marlowe's Socks: Richard Jones, Print Culture, and the Beginnings of English Dramatic Literature." Studies in Philology 102 (2005): 184-209. 

Events
Morning

• Discussion of  Feb. 18 readings

Library

• Begin the communications circuit for your book; research the publisher of your book and its audeince of likely readers or potential patrons

Afternoon

• Results of library activities
• More discussion of Feb. 18 readings

Feb. 25: Descriptive Bibliography of Early Modern Books

Readings

• Required
• Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, 3rd ed.. (Modern Language Association of America, 1999): pp. 15-53.
• David Scott Kastan, “Size Matters,” Shakespeare Studies 28 (2000): 149-53
• Stephen K. Gailbraith, "English Literary Folios, 1593-1623: Studying Shifts in Format," Tudor Books and Readers, ed. John N. King (Cambridge, 2010), 46-67
• Recommended
• Dand and Gillespie, "The Myth of the Cheap Quarto," Tudor Books and Readers (above), 25-45

Events
Morning

• How books are made; paper folding; book formats
• Collation Formulae

Library

• Identify the format and the basic structure of your book; copy collation formula from Hamnet and check for any irregularities; look at 3-4 other examples of your category of book (on EEBO): how does your book fit into the broader material conventions of this category of book?

Afternoon

• Results of library activities
• Discussion of Feb. 25 readings 

March 4: Break

March 11: Textual Criticism and Reference Bibliography

Readings

• Joseph Loewenstein, "Authentic Reproductions: The Material Origins of the New Bibliography," Textual Formations and Reformations, ed. Maguire et al. (Delaware, 1998), 23-44.
  
• Alan Farmer, "Shakespeare and the New Textualism," Shakespearean International Yearbook 2, ed. Elton and Mucciolo (Ashgate, 2002), 158-79
  
• Patricia Parker, "Murder in Guyana," Shakespeare Studies 28 (2000): 169-74

Events
Morning

• Discuss March 11 readings
• Discuss critical and historiographic traditions related to your book

Library

• Work on charting and comparing editions of your book

Afternoon

• Discuss results of library time

March 18: Finding and Reading Manuscripts

Reading

National Archives Online Paleography Course -  http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography
(Entire tutorial -- do exercises)

Events
Morning

• Dr. Owen Williams on early modern hands and finding aids for manuscript material

Library

• Is there any manuscript in your book? Can you read it? If not, locate another book in your area of inquiry that has readers’ marks.  Prepare a brief note describing your findings.

Afternoon

• Practice manuscript transcription as a group

March 25: Cultures of Handwriting

Readings

• Required 
• Harold Love and Arthur F. Marotti, "Manuscript Transmission and Circulation," The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2002), Chapter 2 
• James Daybell, Women's Letter Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), Chapter 6
• Recommended
• Juliet Fleming, "Graffiti, Grammatology, and the Age of Shakespeare," Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, ed. Fumerton and Hunt (Pennsylvania , 1999), pp. 315-51.
• Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter: From the Hands of the English Renaissance (Stanford, 1990), Chapter 2.
• Heather Wolfe, "Women's Handwriting," The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women's Writing (Cambridge, 2009, 21-39)

Events
Morning

• Discussion of March 25 readings

Library

• Locate and examine a manuscript relevant to your area of inquiry; prepare a brief note.

Afternoon

• More manuscript transcription practice with Dr. Owen Williams

April 1: Images: Resources and Analysis

Readings

• Required
• Hulse and Erickson, Introduction, Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race and Empire in Renaissance England (Penn, 2000), 1-14.
• Stephen Orgel,"Textual Icons: Reading Early Modern Illustrations," The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print, edited by Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday (Routledge, 2000), 59-94.  
• Recommended
• Kim F. Hall, "Object into Object: Some thoughts on the Presence of Black Women in Early Modern Culture, Early Modern Visual Culture (above), 346-79
• James A. Knapp, Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: The Representation of History in Printed Books (Ashgate, 2003), Chapter 3.
• Joseph Monteyne, "Enveloping Objects: Allegory And Commodity Fetish In Wenceslaus Hollar’s Personifications Of The Seasons And Fashion Still Lifes," Art History 29 (2006): 414-43.

Events
Morning

• Dr. Erin Blake on the technologies and motives of book illustration
• Resources for finding book illustrations and images

Library

• Find an image relevant to your research topic

Afternoon

• Discussion of library work and of April 1 readings

April 8: Break

April 15: Margins, Types and Paratexts

Readings

• Required
• William Sherman, "What did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books"?, Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Andersen and Sauer (Pennyslvania, 2002), 119-37
• Eric Nebeker, "Broadside Ballads, Miscellanies, and the Lyric in Print," ELH 76 (2009): 989-1013
• Recommended
• Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), 149-69
• Steven K. Galbraith,  "English' Black-Letter Type and Spenser's Shepheardes Calender," Spenser Studies 23 (2008): 13-40
• Lisa Maruca, "Bodies of Type: The Work of Textual Production in English Printers' Manuals," Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (2003): 321-43

Events
Morning

• Dr. Steven Galbraith on title pages and typefaces
• Resources for types and paratexts

Library

• Examine paratextual aspects of your book; consider examples from a few other books in your category

Afternoon

• Discussion of library work and of April 15 readings

April 22: Presenting...Your Book

Presentations

Concluding thoughts

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