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This is a course on lyric theory in the Renaissance and as such is a good introduction to early modern literary study. We will take up the early modern form of the sonnet as a test case for the interaction between vernacularity and globalization. We will consider early modern topics including “invention,” “imitation,” and rhetoric, as well as explore formal concerns that are intertwined with political, social, cultural and economic experiences of early modernity. Along with the consideration of the emergence of literatures in new languages and nationalist differentiation, we will also consider mechanization (whether in print or literary trope) that produced both early modern literature and political life in an international system. We will consider such topics as sequence; modes of address; vernacularity and linguistic nationalism; the themes of love v. empire; the social role of the sonnet; the nature and materiality of writing; patronage and circulation; the question of private, occasional, and public poetry; the place of sonnets in manuscript collections; the histories of books; poetic subjectivity and objective thought; and we will also read a good many sonnets, largely in English, through close attention to language, media and transmission histories. Some contemporary literary theory on the sonnet will be introduced, as well as sonnets in European languages other than English, depending on the students’ interests and proclivities. Students will be expected to work in the manuscript and print collections of the Bodleian library to prepare a class report on their chosen topics. The class puts the sonnet in relation to other forms in Renaissance literature and thus should serve as a good survey of the period and its issues.