Taking its title from Hamlet’s paradoxical definition of man as “the paragon of animals,” my study examines how pre-Cartesian conceptions of humans as animals assume lines of similitude and difference across species that ...

This dissertation analyzes the construction of discursive communities amongst authors, editors, and readers of early modern prose fiction through language, material texts, and reader response. It analyzes Thomas More’s ...

Imagining Public Education in Early Modern England argues that the Tudor vernacular logic and rhetoric manuals participate in the development of early modern publicity. Although the seventeen extant manuals have a diverse ...