ENL 4220 - Spring 2026 - Hand

This class will focus on early modern popular texts, or “bestsellers”: the particular viral texts as well as broader genres that were most widely read and circulated in early modern English culture, 1550-1660. We’ll find out what people were reading, what genres and forms were most common and widespread, and how readers interacted with their texts.

Our class deliberately dodges the “literary canon” in favor of the popular literature that people of diverse backgrounds enjoyed in this time period. This does, of course, include at least some texts that became canonical, but it also includes much more: Broadside ballads, almanacs, popular pamphlets, jest books, sermons and bibles, household and husbandry manuals, cookbooks, plays, local and international news. Renaissance readers read widely. Our objectives include reading these texts closely, becoming familiar with the contexts in which our “bestsellers” were produced and consumed, considering varying definitions of popularity and the formation of the literary canon at the exclusion of “popular” and “genre” literature, and developing a nuanced view of early modern readerships and literacies.

This course fulfills the genre requirement and the pre-1800 requirement for LMC (but may not count toward both simultaneously).