This course will examine the ways in which writers' relationships-- to other writers, to readers and patrons, to printers, stationers, and booksellers, to tradition, and to posterity-- shaped the development of a national literature in early modern England. We will study the works of major authors of the English Renaissance, including Shakespeare, Jonson, Sidney, Wroth, Cavendish, and Milton in the context of their literary relationships. In each case we will consider texts in relation to intellectual history as well as to the social worlds in which they are composed, circulated, and read.