William Caxton and the Labor of Literature in Fifteenth Century England

This dissertation concentrates on a moment in the history of writing when the terms of literary production shifted, and with them the categories of author, reader and late-medieval 'maker.' Focusing on the figure of William Caxton, the project analyzes the ways in which the advent of print intersected with late-medieval theories of literary production, and demonstrates that through his prologues, editorial interventions, and textual selections, Caxton sustained a rich and markedly literary dialogue with not only the new terms of printed production, but the complex political, economic and legal horizons of his enterprise.

Caxton's new visibility in shaping and guiding his texts marks an important formative moment in early print history – a moment often overlooked by reading Caxton's productions without reference to their precise chronology, nor to the specific events against which they were produced. Thus, this project will focus on the years of Richard III's reign (1483-85) as crucial ones in understanding how Caxton constructed literary work within the new form of print, and how the role of incunables might emerge against the backdrop of fifteenth century politics.

Drawing on the work of the new constitutionalists, the dissertation's central chapters introduce Caxton's interest in courtesy books, and build a framework for understanding Caxton as a literary figure with distinct political engagements. Caxton's response to Richard employed a 'popular metaphorics,' a figurative language of the body that Richard himself advanced through his Titulus Regius. These metaphorics were widely parsed and disseminated through the speeches of Archbishop John Russell; Caxton's editions of the Curial and the Book of the Knight of the Tower rehearse these metaphorics as a mode of response and critique to the violence that marked Richard's rise to power. This project's conclusion re-situates Caxton by suggesting that the changes in Caxton's production during Richard III's reign can be read as a move from auctor to printer, a shift deliberately effected by Caxton as a response to the specific context of the 1484 statute.