Early Modern Roll Call

[JustPoesieAlong]

Damn, @mads47, you put my answer to shame! 

[rrk686]

1 hour ago, mads47 said:

Ok I am going to geek out here and attempt to do this question justice. I want to give a few caveats first: many time periods have different names depending on the region (ie. Victorian vs. 19th century American); larger eras of study include a multiplicity of subdivisions; these eras are largely based on canonical interpretation of literature, so many more recent scholars push against these dates of separation between eras and the idea that these eras are typically defined by British and American literature. Also, I am going to define these eras in the way that English scholars typically do, but I think Comp Lit people define the eras slightly differently, because many important literary trends and eras did not start in English. So please, please, please correct me if I am spreading any misinformation.

Midieval Lit: This follows historically what is considered Midieval, so largely the fall of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance. In English, this includes Anglo Saxon literature (from about 500-1066) and Middle English (1066-circa 1500)

Early Modern Lit: This is literature from the Renaissance, Reformation, and Neoclassical eras (circa 1500-circa 1800).

Romanticism: Depending on who you consider the first Romanticists to be, this overlaps with the later Early Modern and Early Victorian Eras. (late 1700s to mid 1800s), this era includes the beginning of Gothic Lit

Victorian Literature: This is literature written during Queen Victoria's rule (1837-1901). This era contains realism, a significant amount of social satire and writing for social reforem, scientific writing, early nature writing and later Romanticism, etc. 

Modernism: This is an era that is tightly defined by 1901-1945, but more loosely encapsulates certain styles from the 1890s to 1950s. Maybe I am biased, because this is my era of study, but it seems an era more defined by certain literary and artistic movements than the time, though it most certainly contains the interwar time.

Postmodernism: This is a term used in so many different ways, it is largely believed to be unhelpful. Some theorists defined it as 1945 to the fall of the Soviet Union. Other people call everything since 1945 postmodern. There is a significant trend to discuss more recent literature in thematic categories instead of by time (ie. Post-colonialism)

Contemporary Lit: This is literature written now-ish. 

I hope this helped a little bit. There are undoubtedly gaps in this timeline, and I hope others will help fill them in (: 

Another good resource for this kind of timeline is the Norton Anthology of English Literature, which is organized in volumes, each volume a literary period. The only period missing in this lovely timeline is the 18th Century, which I don't think gets counted as "early modern" or "Romantic."

[JustPoesieAlong]

(Inspired from the general post on the board about preparatory reading lists): Early modern folks, what are you reading to prepare over the summer? I'm nervous that I have gaps I'm not aware of and would love to know if anyone else has the same worry and what you're doing about it.

Right now, to make sure I've got a solid foundation in early modern medicine/medical rhetoric/early modern science (my primary interests), my reading goals include:

• Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (currently reading)
• Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller
• Ben Johnson's The Alchemist
• Bacon's Advancement of Learning
• Anything on the subject by Stephen Pender
• Lucinda M. Beier's  Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in EM England
• Kerwin's Beyond the Body: The Boundariesof Medicine and English Ren. Drama
• Vaught's Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and EM Engand

It's laughably ambitious to hope that I will get through all of this before fall, what with kids, a full time job, selling our house, moving, but I'm just going to do my best.

But, more generally, what works do you consider "required reading" before you start your respective programs? 

[BlessMeWithSnow]

13 hours ago, JustPoesieAlong said:

(Inspired from the general post on the board about preparatory reading lists): Early modern folks, what are you reading to prepare over the summer? I'm nervous that I have gaps I'm not aware of and would love to know if anyone else has the same worry and what you're doing about it.

Right now, to make sure I've got a solid foundation in early modern medicine/medical rhetoric/early modern science (my primary interests), my reading goals include:

• Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (currently reading)
• Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller
• Ben Johnson's The Alchemist
• Bacon's Advancement of Learning
• Anything on the subject by Stephen Pender
• Lucinda M. Beier's  Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in EM England
• Kerwin's Beyond the Body: The Boundariesof Medicine and English Ren. Drama
• Vaught's Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and EM Engand

It's laughably ambitious to hope that I will get through all of this before fall, what with kids, a full time job, selling our house, moving, but I'm just going to do my best.

But, more generally, what works do you consider "required reading" before you start your respective programs? 

Your list looks great!

I’m not even sure where I’m going yet, but at the very least parallel to my current studies I’m aiming for:

Radical Tragedy by Jonathan Dollimor

and finishing up a few final plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ford to round up the dramatic corpus

 

[AGingeryGinger]

I applied to a ton of places.

I was inspired by a phone call by Karl Gunther, at U of Miami, who said that 1) the academic job market for early modern british historians is rather small and 2), U of Miami hasn't placed a tenure track job in Early Modern history since 2008.

My focus is on Tudor/Stuart England focusing on Anglicanism and English Religious History.

So, i admittedly shotgunned it:

PhD History

U of Illinois at Chicago - Ralph Keen

Vanderbilt - Peter Lake

Purdue - Melinda Zook

PhD Religion

Fordham - Patrick Hornbeck

McGill - Torrance Kirby

SMU - Bruce Marshall

 

I accepted the offer at Purdue. Purdue and Dr. Zook have an unusually high record of tenure track placements, especially in British History.

[rrk686]

@AGingeryGinger

What are some of your recommendations for books or authors on early modern history?