A research project which makes understanding early seventeenth-century literature more accessible by using modern-spelling is becoming a topic of a new English course at Medicine Hat College (MHC), set to be offered in winter 2024.
Mark Kaethler, academic chair and instructor in MHC's school of arts, science, and education, has created the first modern-spelling edition of London's Tempe by Thomas Dekker, since 1968. The project is a result of both a SSHRC Insight Grant and SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, of which Kaethler is a co-applicant on with Janelle Jenstad, a faculty member from the University of Victoria and project lead on both grants.
Kaethler says the text highlights a form of drama which took place at the time it was written, called mayoral shows, which were performed in the streets to entertain and advise the Lord Mayor of the city at the time.
"I've always been interested in how cities inform literature and how a community and the social aspects of that causes us to understand a world," explains Kaethler. "I was really interested in these ones because it's not just a play on a stage, it's a play in the streets, making the narrative of the city with people."
Both students and the public may access the text on an online open-access platform, Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO), created by Jenstad. This digital project links with Jenstad and Kaethler's other project, the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), so that users can obtain a better understanding of the text through connecting its drama with the city sites in which it was performed."
For students taking the bachelor of education program, a collaborative program between MHC and Mount Royal University, the new early seventeenth-century literature course will help students understand how space and environment can be a means of storytelling.
"Students will get a sense of how space and environment works in terms of storytelling. There's a sense in how a place helps to tell a story or how the space you're in helps to guide in that way."
While the grant funding for the project ends this year, Kaethler and Jenstad plan to apply for additional funding to publish more works in the same place, a task which has never been done before.
To view Kaethler's latest work published on the LEMDO platform, please visit: www.lemdo.uvic.ca/moms/emdTEMP3_M.html
