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Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism PDF

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Political Shakespeare edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield Political Shakespeare Essays in cultural materialism second edition Cornell University Press Ithaca and London Copyright © Manchester University Press 1985, 1994 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1985 by Cornell University Press. First published, Cornell Paperbacks, 1985. Second Edition first published 1994 by Cornell University Press. Second Edition, Cornell Paperbacks, first published 1994. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Political Shakespeare: essays in cultural materialism / edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0-8014-3091-7.—ISBN 0-8014-8243-7 (pbk.) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Political and social views. 2. Politics and literature—England—History—16th century. 3. Political plays, English—History and criticism. 4. Social change in literature. 5. Authority in literature. I. Dollimore, Jonathan. II. Sinfield, Alan. PR.3017.P59 1994 822.3'3—dc2o 94-15983 » Printed in Great Britain Contents Preface to the second edition vii Foreword to the first edition Cultural materialism vii Part I Recovering history 1 Jonathan Dollimore 2 Introduction: Shakespeare, cultural materialism and the new historicism 2 Stephen Greenblatt 18 Invisible bullets: Renaissance authority and its subversion, Henry IV and Henry V 3 Paul Brown 48 ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’: The Tempest and the discourse of colonialism 4 Jonathan Dollimore 72 Transgression and surveillance in Measure for Measure 5 Kathleen McLuskie 88 The patriarchal bard: feminist criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure 6 Leonard Tennenhouse 109 Strategies of State and political plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII 7 Jonathan Dollimore 129 Shakespeare understudies: the sodomite, the prostitute, the transvestite and their critics [v] Contents Part II Reproductions, interventions 8 Alan Sinfield 154 Introduction: Reproductions, interventions 9 Alan Sinfield 158 Give an account of Shakespeare and Education, showing why you think they are effective and what you have appreciated about them. Support your comments with precise references 10 Alan Sinfield 182 Royal Shakespeare: theatre and the making of ideology 11 Graham Holdemess 206 Radical potentiality and institutional closure: Shakespeare in film and television 12 Margot Heinemann 226 How Brecht read Shakespeare 13 Alan Sinfield 255 Heritage and the market, regulation and desublimation Raymond Williams 281 Afterword ( Index 290 [vi] * Preface to the second edition This second edition of Political Shakespeare includes all the essays of the first edition and two new chapters. In chapter 7, ‘Shakespeare understudies: the sodomite, the prostitute, the transvestite and their critics’, Jonathan Dollimore discusses current critical approaches to questions of gender and sexuality — topics in which some of the most important critical developments of the last decade have occurred. In Chapter 13, ‘Heritage and the market, regulation and desublimation’, Alan Sinfield revisits themes from the second part of the book, in the light of major cultural and political changes in Britain and the United States. Raymond Williams’s ‘Afterword’ still stands last. This second edition is dedicated to his memory, and to that of another contributor, Margot Heinemann. It is also for Helena Dollimore, born March 22, 1994. J.D., A.S., 1994 Foreword to the first edition: Cultural materialism The break-up of consensus in British political life during the 1970s was accompanied by the break-up of traditional assumptions about the values and goals of literary criticism. Initially at specialised conferences and in committed journals, but increasingly in the main stream of intellectual life, literary texts were related to the new and challenging discourses of Marxism, feminism, structuralism, psycho-analysis and poststructuralism. It is widely admitted that all this has brought a new rigour and excitement to literary discussions. At the same time, it has raised profound questions about the status of literary texts, both as linguistic entities and as ideological forces in our society. Some approaches offer a significant alternative to traditional practice; others are little more than realignments of familiar posi¬ tions. But our belief is that a combination of historical context, theoretical method, political commitment and textual analysis offers the strongest challenge and has already contributed substantial work. Historical context undermines the transcendent significance traditionally accorded to the literary text and allows us to recover its histories; theoretical method detaches the text from immanent criticism which seeks only to reproduce it in its own terms; socialist and feminist commitment confronts the conservative categories in which most criticism has hitherto been conducted; textual analysis locates the critique of traditional approaches where it cannot be ignored. We call this ‘cultural materialism’. There are (at least) two ways of using the word ‘culture’. The [vii] Foreword analytic one is used in the social sciences and especially anthro¬ pology: it seeks to describe the whole system of significations by which a society or a section of it understands itself and its relations with the world. The evaluative use has been more common when we are thinking about ‘the arts’ and ‘literature’: to be ‘cultured’ is to be the possessor of superior values and a refined sensibility, both of which are manifested through a positive and fulfilling engagement with ‘good’ literature, art, music and so on. Cultural materialism draws upon the analytic sense of ‘culture’, and it includes work on the cultures of subordinate and marginalised groups like schoolchildren and skinheads, and on forms like television and popular music and fiction. But its effects are perhaps most startling when it is applied to artefacts and practices which have traditionally been prized within the evaluative idea of culture. In brief, ‘high culture’ is taken as one set of signifying practices among others. ‘Materialism’ is opposed to ‘idealism’: it insists that culture does not (cannot) transcend the material forces and relations of produc¬ tion. Culture is not simply a reflection of the economic and political system, but nor can it be independent of it. Cultural materialism therefore studies the implication of literary texts in history. A play by Shakespeare is related to the contexts of its production — to the economic and political system of Elizabethan and Jacobean England and to the particular institutions of cultural production (the court, patronage, theatre, education, the church). Moreover, the relevant history is not just that of four hundred years ago, for culture is made continuously and Shakespeare’s text is reconstructed, re¬ appraised, reassigned all the time through diverse institutions in specific contexts. What the plays signify, how they signify, depends on the cultural field in which they are situated. That is why this book discusses also the institutions through which Shakespeare is reproduced and through which interventions may be made in the present. Finally, cultural materialism does not pretend to political neutral¬ ity. It knows that no cultural practice is ever without political significance — not the production of King Lear at the Globe, or at the Barbican, or as a text in a school, popular or learned edition, or in literary criticism, or in the present volume. Cultural material¬ ism does not, like much established literary criticism, attempt to mystify its perspective as the natural, obvious or right interpretation of an allegedly given textual fact. On the contrary, it registers its commitment to the transformation of a social order which exploits people on grounds of race, gender and class. J.D., A.S., University of Sussex, 1985 [viii]

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