| The advent of the printing press during the Renaissance period brought on a communications revolution not unlike the current revolution we are experiencing by embracing the digital medium. Working both backwards and forward, this project discusses the tensions that arise from moving knowledge from one medium to another in both the Renaissance period and the digital age. Applying a literary scope, this project emphasizes how these issues manifest in several literary Renaissance texts with a focus on three main ones, namely Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World . The discussion concludes with a text produced exclusively for the digital medium: Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. One of the main interests in this study is the position of women within and surrounding the issue of knowledge acquisition in both mediums. Scholarships on the emergence of women writers in print during the Renaissance period is juxtaposed with scholarship concerning women and the digital medium in the hope of discerning how women have fared during the emergence of new inscription technologies. The project is split into two sections, each containing a primary chapter that builds a theoretical framework, which contextualizes the literary analysis undertaken in the succeeding secondary chapter. Finally, the concluding chapter brings together the threads previously discussed and, in summarizing the arguments given, also briefly discusses the future trajectory of this project. |
