Julianne Werlin

I am an early modernist with two major areas of interest: sociological approaches to literary history, and poetry and poetics. I am currently working on a project entitled English Renaissance Authors: A Demographic History, which considers how literary history evolved in response to trends in mortality, nuptiality, education, and economic change over the period from 1500 to 1700. I am also beginning a study of literary generations, from the Black Death to the modern era. 

My work also examines connections between economic and literary history. My first book, Writing at the Origin of Capitalism (Oxford) attempted to synthesize the findings of book history and early modern English economic history to show how market centralization shaped the production and circulation of books and manuscripts. I have an ongoing interest in the intersection of book history and the economy, including price history, the market for popular and elite literature (ballads versus folios), and the relationship between class and genre.

In my scholarship and teaching on poetry and poetics, I am currently particularly interested in prosody, rhyme, and metaphor. We badly need new taxonomies of formal and stylistic elements that will allow us to draw more precise discriminations between the use of different devices. I also enjoy considering long literary histories, from the ancient world to the present, and welcome conversations with students at any level who share that interest.