This course focuses on transformations of major literary forms during the sixteenth century, especially on how these transformations involve engagements with medieval and earlier materials. It covers such topics as Petrarchan poetry in translation by Wyatt and Surrey; John Fox's and John Bale's repackaging of Anne Askew's biography; and the work of Ovid and other classical authors in translation and adaptation, as in the Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.