This seminar is designed to introduce students to the theoretical and practical tools of textual scholarship by asking how books are made, read, and studied. We will learn about book history (from antiquity to the internet), authorship theory, editing literary texts, and techniques for studying rare books. The course will then focus on several case studies of important literary works from the British and American traditions that can be explored using this methodology, including those chosen by students for their seminar projects.
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