Literature and Print Culture

Catalog description

The cultural impact of widely circulating printed material -- books of poetry, essays, and fiction but also newspapers, stock certificates, and advertisements -- makes the period 1660-1740 the first technologically enabled information age. The production and consumption of published texts changed the world for the restored monarch and his licentious court, for the rising bourgeoisie, and for the newly literate classes. We will follow several controversies, experiments, and innovations of the print revolution in works as apparently diverse as Milton's epic poetry, Manley's erotic secret histories, and the ads in The Spectator . Other canonical and non-canonical writers include Rochester, Behn, Dryden, Swift, Manley, Haywood, and Defoe.