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Abstract
Over the last century scholars have privileged the author or have privileged the text, when trying to interpret the meaning of a literary artifact. Even more historically minded scholars have tended to focus on the context or the cultural milieu surrounding the author or a text, but scholars rarely consider the semiotic value of the printers and the booksellers listed on a title page. My dissertation addresses this absence in literary scholarship by examining the relationships or social networks that connect the printed artifacts to the people involved in their production. My argument asserts that early modern English writers, printers, and booksellers often shared ideological beliefs and that these shared beliefs can tell us something about the text they produced. My method combines traditional archival research with the technology used in Social Network Analysis. By running large databases, such as Early English Books Online, English Short Title Catalogue, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, through social network software, my research was able to visualize large and small social networks that might otherwise go unnoticed when using traditional methods. My dissertation avers that the printer of a text matters to our understanding of the literary work. For instance, I argue that Edmund Spenser employs Hugh Singleton, a known radical Protestant and Marian exile, to print the Shepheardes Calender, because Spenser wants to align himself with the Protestant faction with whom Singleton is associated. Through an examination of Singletons network, a much more politically radical poem begins to emerge. I conclude the dissertation with by turning towards Ben Jonsons ambivalent relationship to print. The Jonson chapter, like the other chapters, is guided by the sociological notion of homophily. Homophily explains the reasons people work, recreate, and collaborate. My dissertation demonstrates that early modern identities, at least those found on the title page of a text, are defined by their shared ideologies and their similarities, much more than by their differences, whether these are class, race, or gender.