Customer Reviews

Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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This early example of Stephen Greenblatt's literary reading practice agrees with his theory is general. Often labeled an adherent of the new historicism (a literary theory that ascribes the authorship of books to communities and communities to books), Greenblatt shirks that title here in favor of his own phrase "cultural poetics." He explores Renaissance works, from obscure spiritual pamphlets to Shakespeare's "Othello," showing how each text is not authored by a single, coherent authorial consciousness, but is rather the product of complexly intertwined social forces, almost like an insect caught in a spider's web.

Greenblatt boldly asserts that there is no individual genius behind Shakespeare's plays, an example of the end toward which his brand of reading techniuqes are directed. Early on, he claims that his technique is not a "theory" per se, but a reading "practice," a set of approaches to literature. This claim is not fully convinving, though, and while his assessment of how people create books and books create people is thoughtful, it is hard to accept his claim that his position is free from the totalizing assumptions of every other theory.

I do not believe I would read this book on my own initiative to just "learn", for the authors' style simply does not work with my style of reading and comprehending. That said, this book is absolutely invaluable for research on major Renaissance authors. The bibliographies and sources cited within his essays are also utterly helpful should more sources be needed for the project at hand. I will admit that at times I find the essays to ramble on a little, but I have always been a to-the-point writer. Those same endless sentences also make wonderful cited quotations, so I cannot complain too much.

Perfect for any student of Renaissance literature, or the Renaissance intellectual.

OK. So maybe I'm biased. I took a course from Greenblatt when an undergard at U.C. Berekely, and he then directed my dissertation when I took my Ph.D. From U.C. Berkeley as well. But I am not alone in regarding this book as a masterpiece, exteremely well-written adn insightful. This book transformed not only the study of the Renaissance but of English literature in general. Moreover, it has influenced historians such as Natalie Daivis and anthropologists. After 17 years, Renaissance Self-Fashioning totally stands up. The chapters on Wyatt, Tyndale, More (truly stellar), Spenser, and Shakespeare remained unsurpassed. Readers may quibble, but though whose do have never written and will never write a book anywhere remotely near the excellence of Greeblatt's. It is truly inspired and deservedly influential.

I admire this book greatly and give it 5 stars for the way it made me reread important renaissance writings. Greenblatt's stories are engaging and his writing all things considered is good for an academic. But New Historicism suffers from the disabilities of all of the new "isms"--it dispenses with evidence or rather decides what counts as evidence. Rather like the man who went to a psyciatrist claiming he was dead. "Do dead men bleed?" asked the psychiatrist "Of course not" said the patient wherupon the Psychiatrist poked him with a needle and drew blood. "What do you know" said the patient "Dead men DO bleed!" Karl Popper argued that if an argument cannot in principle be proved wrong it is not an argument. This is Greenblatt's problem

Mr. Greenblatt's theories continue an academic tradition of discounting the individual work of the writer by forcing historical context over text, treating the writer of a creative work as mere vessel. What happened to the individual reader encoutering the writer via the work of art? Of course, this common sense approach would cut short a lot of pedantic careers, and that is what Critical Theory is all about: it allows pedants to have a job.