The Greenblatt Reader

328 Pages·2005·3.8 MB·english

by  Stephen Greenblatt

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THE GREENBLATT READER
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Praise for The Greenblatt Reader
‘‘As a founder of the New Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt has done more than
establish a critical school; he has invented a habit of mind for literary criticism,
which is indispensable to the temperament of our times, and crucial to the
cultural of the past. This admirable anthology represents the subtle play of
pleasure and instruction, embodied in writings that move effortlessly between
wonder and wisdom.’’
Homi K. Bhabha,HarvardUniversity
‘‘For three decades Stephen Greenblatt has been the most articulate, thoughtful,
and daring voice in early modern studies. The breadth of his reading is vast, the
connections he makes are unexpected and often revelatory, and his writing is,
quite simply, brilliant. Most of all, his willingness to take chances has made him
an exciting and uniquely provocative critic. It is wonderful to have these classic
essays in a single collection; and especially to have the most ephemeral of the
pieces, theexquisite meditations on hisvisits to China andLaos, easilyavailable.
This is a beautifully conceived, indispensable volume.’’
Stephen Orgel, StanfordUniversity
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THE GREENBLATT
READER
Stephen Greenblatt
Edited by Michael Payne
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(cid:1)2005StephenGreenblatt
Editorialmaterialandorganization(cid:1)2005byBlackwellPublishingLtd
BLACKWELLPUBLISHING
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Greenblatt,Stephen,1943-
TheGreenblattreader/StephenGreenblatt;editedbyMichealPayne.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN1-4051-1565-3(hardback)—ISBN1-4051-1566-1(pbk.)
1. Criticism. 2. Historicism. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Criticism and
interpretation.I.Payne,Michael,1941–II.Title.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction: Greenblatt and New Historicism 1
Part I Culture and New Historicism 9
1 Culture 11
2 Towards aPoetics of Culture 18
3 The Touch of the Real 30
Part II Renaissance Studies 51
4 The Wound inthe Wall 53
5 Marvelous Possessions 81
Part III Shakespeare Studies 119
6 Invisible Bullets 121
7 The Improvisation of Power 161
8 Shakespeareand the Exorcists 197
9 Martial Law inthe Land of Cockaigne 229
Part IV Occasional Pieces 261
10 Prologue toHamlet inPurgatory 263
11 China:Visiting Rites 269
12 China:Visiting Rites (II) 282
13 Laos is Open 291
14 Story-Telling 303
Stephen Greenblatt: A Bibliography(1965–2003), compiled
byGustavo P.Secchi 307
Index 314
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editor wishes to thank, yet again, the remarkable editorial staff at Blackwell
Publishing in Oxford; especially, on this occasion, Emma Bennett and Helen
Gray. Special thanks are also due to Gustavo P. Secchi, Professor Greenblatt’s
researchassistantatHarvard,forpreparingthebibliographyofGreenblatt’smany
publications through 2003. The bibliography was already in proof before the
appearance of Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
(Norton, 2004), which brilliantly complements and continues much of what
appears in Part III of this book.
Finally, I wish to express special gratitude to the author of these pieces, both
forwhathehastaughtusaboutShakespeareandtheEnglishRenaissanceandfor
his inspiring example of creative scholarship and professional civility.
M. P.
The editor and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to
use copyright material:
‘Culture’ from Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Thomas McLaughlin and
Frank Lentricchia (University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 225–32). Reprinted
by kind permission of The University of Chicago Press.
‘Towards a Poetics of Culture’ from Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern
Culture by Stephen Greenblatt (Routledge, 1990, pp. 146–60). Copyright
(cid:1) 1990 by Stephen Greenblatt. Reprinted by permission of Routledge/Taylor
& Francis Books, Inc.
‘TheTouchoftheReal’fromPracticingNewHistoricism(UniversityofChicago
Press, 2000, pp. 20–48). Reprinted by kind permission of The University of
Chicago Press.
‘The Wound in the Wall’ from Practicing New Historicism (University of
Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 75–109). Reprinted by kind permission of The
University of Chicago Press.
‘Marvelous Possessions’ excerpt from Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the
New World (University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 52–85). Reprinted by kind
permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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acknowledgments vii
‘Invisible Bullets’, from Shakespearean Negotiations (Oxford University Press,
1988, pp. 21–65). Copyright (cid:1) 1988 The Regents of the University of Califor-
nia. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press and the University of
California Press.
‘The Improvisation of Power’, from Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare (University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 222–54). Reprinted by kind
permission of the University of Chicago Press.
‘Shakespeare and the Exorcists’, from Shakespearean Negotiations (Oxford
University Press, 1988, pp. 94–128). Copyright (cid:1) 1988 The Regents of
the University of California. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University
Press and the University of California Press.
‘Martial Law in the Land of Cocaigne’, from Shakespearean Negotiations
(Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 129–63). Copyright (cid:1) 1988 The Regents
of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University
Press and the University of California Press.
‘Prologue’ from Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton University Press, 2001,
pp. 3–9). Copyright (cid:1) 2001 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by
permission of Princeton University Press.
‘China:VisitingRites’,firstappearedinRaritanVol.2,No.4,(Spring,1983):
1–23. Reprinted by permission.
‘China: Visiting Rites II’, first appeared in Raritan Vol. 4, No. 4 (Spring,
1985): 44–56. Reprinted by permission.
‘Laos is Open’, from H. Aram Vesser ed. Confessions of the Critics, Routledge,
1996, pp. 221–34. Copyright (cid:1) 1996 from Confessions of the Critics by H. Aram
Vesser (ed.). Reprinted by permission of Routledge/Taylor and Francis Books,
Inc.
‘Story–Telling’, originally published in The Threepenny Review 11, 1990: 23.
Reprinted by permission.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their
permission for the use of copyright material. The authors and publishers will
gladly receive any information enabling them to rectify any error or omission in
subsequent editions.
Payne/TheGreenblattReader FinalProof 4.11.2004 6:53pm page viii
Payne/TheGreenblattReader FinalProof 4.11.2004 6:54pm page 1
INTRODUCTION: GREENBLATT
AND NEW HISTORICISM
StephenGreenblattisthemostinfluentialpractitionerofnewhistoricism(orwhat
hesometimescallsculturalpoetics).ThisReader makes available for the first time
in one volume his most important writings on culture, Renaissance studies, and
Shakespeare. It also features occasional pieces on subjects as diverse as miracles,
traveling in Laos and China, and story-telling, which suggest the range of his
intellectualandculturalinterestsandtheversatilityofhisstylesasawriter.Taken
together,thetextscollectedheredispelsuchmisconceptionsasthatnewhistori-
cism is antithetical to literary and aesthetic value, that it reduces the historical to
the literary or the literary to the historical, that it denies human agency and
creativity, that it is somehow out to subvert the politics of cultural and critical
theory, or that it is anti-theoretical.1 Such categorical dismissals of new histori-
cism(whichisaninterdisciplinaryandmultiplicitouswayofknowing)simplydo
not stand up against a careful reading of these texts. The intended audience for
thisbookincludesstudentsof theRenaissanceand Shakespeare,thoseinterested
primarily in cultural and critical theory, and general readers who have encoun-
tered Greenblatt’s journalistic writing and who may want to know more about
his work.
Admittedlythereisacertainironyhereincollecting,singlingout,andcelebrating
Greenblatt’swritinginananthologysuchasthis,becausemuchofhisscholarshiphas
beendeterminedlypartofacollectiveprojectthathasincluded,forexample,the
membersoftheEditorialBoardofthejournalRepresentations,2includingCatherine
Gallagher, with whom he recently coauthored Practicing New Historicism,3 which
is a key text for understanding its subject. (Indeed, his notion of authorship,
including his own, seems closely allied to Michel Foucault’s declaration that
‘‘The author’s name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and
indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture.’’4) Even the
earliest manifesto for a new historicism appeared quite modestly as Greenblatt’s
introduction to a collection of essays (a reprint of an issue of Genre published by
the University of Oklahoma Press entitled The Power of Forms in the English
Renaissance), which included important papers by eleven other scholars.
Greenblatt begins that introduction with Queen Elizabeth’s understandably
bitter reaction to the revival of Shakespeare’s Richard II on the eve of the Essex