Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton
Cambridge University Press, 10/22/2012
EAN 9781107027510, ISBN10: 1107027519
Hardcover, 280 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Reading literary texts in their historical contexts has been the dominant form of interpretation in literary criticism for the past thirty years. This collection of essays reflects on the origins of historicism and its present usefulness as a mode of literary analysis, its limitations and its future. The volume provides a brief history of the practice from its Renaissance origins, offering examples of historicist work that not only demonstrate the continuing vitality of this methodology but also suggest new directions for research. Focusing on the major figures of Shakespeare and Milton, these essays provide important and concise representations of trends in the field. Designed for scholars and students of early modern English literature (1500–1700), the volume will also be of interest to students of literature more generally and to historians.
Acknowledgments
Introduction Ann Baynes Coiro and Thomas Fulton
Part I. Historicism and Its Discontents
1. Has historicism gone too far
or, should we return to form? Andrew Hadfield
2. Theory and practice in historical method Michael McKeon
3. Limiting history Marshall Grossman
Part II. Historicism and Theology
4. The politics of Renaissance historicism
Valla, Erasmus, Colet, and more Thomas Fulton
5. Historicizing satisfaction in Shakespeare's Othello Heather Hirschfeld
Part III. Dramatic Histories
6. The new presentism and its discontents
listening to Eastward Ho and Shakespeare's Tempest in dialogue Paul Stevens
7. In great men's houses
playing, patronage, and the performance of Tudor history Lawrence Manley
Part IV. Milton and the Problems of History
8. Medea's dilemma
politics and passion in Milton's divorce tracts Sharon Achinstein
9. Milton, Foucault, and the new historicism Martin Dzelzainis
Part V. Gendering Historicism
10. 'You shall be our generalless'
fashioning warrior women from Henrietta Maria to Hillary Clinton Laura Knoppers
11. War-times
seventeenth-century women's writing and its afterlives Erin Murphy
Afterword Nigel Smith.