Matt Ryan
Doctoral Student in Literature - Matt’s thesis is entitled ‘My purse is turnd downeward’: Print and precarity in late-Elizabethan England'.
Research Project Title:
‘My purse is turnd downeward’: Print and Precarity in late-Elizabethan England
Supervisors:
Prof Jennifer Richards, Dr Kate De Rycker and Dr Jane Nolan
Contact Details:
Email: m.ryan2@newcastle.ac.uk
Research Interests:
- Early modern prose fiction
- Early modern book history
- Authorial self-fashioning in sixteenth century literature
- Representations of penury and precarity
- Network science and the future of work
Brief Outline of Research Project:
Offering a new literary history of the Elizabethan print-house, my project will argue that those working in the early modern book industry built collaborative networks of support to mitigate the socio-economic precarity of their profession. It will also investigate how these collaborative solutions speak to the precarious livelihoods of 21st-century creatives.
My thesis will examine the testimonies of early modern stationers alongside the work of writers like Thomas Nashe, Henry Chettle and Gabriel Harvey to explore what these texts tell us about the collaborative practices employed by late sixteenth century writers, printers and publishers. Drawing from discussions of the 21st-century cultural sector, I will re-frame the early modern print marketplace as a collaborative ecosystem in which authors, printers and publishers worked together to build extensive support networks in response to socio-economic uncertainty. This will shed new light on the relationships between early modern stationers and writers and allow us comparative insight into the experiences of those working in the arts and humanities today.
- Under Review: “Keeping it in the family: Intergenerational Collaboration in Early Modern Manuscript Recipe Books” (Notes and Records of the Royal Society)
- January 2022 - Northern Early Modern Network Conference
- March 2022 - Newberry Graduate Conference