ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief introduction to the early modern period. It discusses several defining metaphors commonly used to describe this period – Renaissance, Golden Age, and Enlightenment – and addresses three questions: What do we mean when using the term “early modern” and/or “modernity”? What constituted Europe in this era, and how did this relate to European expansion overseas? What was defined as literature in this period, i.e. what were the functions, media, infrastructure and audiences of literature, and how did these relate to the emerging public sphere? The authors then address several specific aspects of modernity. These include, primarily, the media revolutions brought about by the invention of the printing press and the increasing availability of books and their diffusion worldwide; media revolution is in turn related to the coexistence of printed books with manuscript culture, the emergence of the concept of the Republic of Letters and the diversification and variety of reading experiences. Secondly, attention is focused on religious differentiation, with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation producing movements of secularization and individualisation, and new forms of literary expression. Finally, the authors discuss increasing cultural and geographical mobility and its effects on (early) modernity and its literary representations.
