Reading Context: Topics in Production and Reception of Texts

Each work of literature has a history. This history focuses our attention on how books, plays and films are produced, how they circulate across nations and across time, and the multiple contexts and forms in which they are interpreted. This course asks students to employ a range of approaches to understand the complex histories surrounding the production and reception of literary works from the 17th century to the digital age, and how these histories are connected to a text’s accumulation of meaning . Topics may include: the global novel; authorship and authority; the Victorian novel then and now; Andrew Marvell in context; making theatre; taste, aesthetics and cultural value, and the history of reading.