Over the past three decades, no critical movement has been more prominent in Shakespeare Studies than new historicism. And yet, it remains notoriously difficult to pin down, define and explain, let alone analyze. Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of new historicism as a development in Shakespeare studies while asking fundamental questions about its status as literary theory and its continued usefulness as a method of approaching Shakespeare's plays.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.3, Technical University of Chemnitz, language: English, abstract: The power that makes us handle ourselves and others around us is something we do not even notice, but that is central to all our lives. While actual physical violence is far away for many of us, nobody can deny how society has a certain rule over each of us. We have expectations towards others and ourselves that are central for the way we think and behave. Cultural values do not only shape our daily lives but also every text that is written. These texts on the other hand have the power to influence our values and believe on what is wrong and right. Because I am very interested in this topic and also how texts form our picture of the world I chose to write about New Historicism. New Historicism is a literary theory that, in my opinion, everybody can understand and relate to. A central idea is how every text shows signs of the time and the society it is produced in. A logical consequence, since the author is never free of perceptions of his time and never subjective. On the other hand a text, read by many people, can easily influence their opinions and believes. For example the texts written about Queen Elisabeth contributed to her image of the Virgin Queen. These ideas, bought up as literary theory in New Historicism, are important until today. While books and theater plays might not be as important for many of us we are influenced, not only by television, but also by newspapers and articles we read. Our “self” is still created through the society we live in.

A complete critical introduction to New Historicist and Cultural Materialist approaches that have dominated contemporary Shakespeare theory, as well as alternative new directions.

New Historicism has been one of the major developments in literary theory over the last decade, both in the USA and Europe. In this book, Wilson and Dutton examine the theories behind New Historicism and its celebrated impact in practice on Renaissance Drama, providing an important collection both for students of the genre and of literary theory.

Over the past three decades, no critical movement has been more prominent in Shakespeare Studies than new historicism. And yet, it remains notoriously difficult to pin down, define and explain, let alone analyze. Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of new historicism as a development in Shakespeare studies while asking fundamental questions about its status as literary theory and its continued usefulness as a method of approaching Shakespeare's plays.

Moments of Negotiation offers the first book-length and indepth analysis of the New Historicist reading method, which the American Shakespeare-scholar Stephen Greenblatt introduced at the beginning of the 1980s. Ever since, Greenblatt has been hailed as the prime representative of this movement, whose critical acclaim has been one of the dominant trends in recent literary and cultural studies. In this new book, Jürgen Pieters attempts to fill a remarkable lacuna in the critical reception of Greenblatt's work. The book's aim is to provide a thorough analysis of the theoretical background of Greenblatt's method. This involves not only a close reading of Greenblatt's sources—the book offers introductory surveys of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Pierre Macherey, Michel de Certeau, Jean-François Lyotard, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall—but also a critique of the way in which he adapts and transforms their original insights in the framework of his own interdisciplinary method. This book is of interest to students and scholars coming from a diverse range of fields: literary theory, cultural history, early modern studies, Shakespeare studies,theory and practice of history.

This important intervention in the critical and theoretical discourse of Shakespeare studies summarises, evaluates and ultimately calls time on the mode of criticism that has prevailed in Shakespeare studies over the past thirty years. It heralds a new, m

Located at the intersection of new historicism and the 'new formalism', historical formalism is one of the most rapidly growing and important movements in early modern studies: taking seriously the theoretical issues raised by both history and form, it challenges the anti-formalist orthodoxies of new historicism and expands the scope of historicist criticism. Shakespeare and Historical Formalism is the first volume devoted exclusively to collecting and assessing work of this kind. With essays on a broad range of Shakespeare's works and engaging topics from performance theory to the emergence of 'the literary' and from historiography to pedagogy, the volume demonstrates the value of historical formalism for Shakespeare studies and for literary criticism as a whole. Shakespeare and Historical Formalism begins with an introduction that describes the nature and potential of historical formalism and traces its roots in early modern literary theory and its troubled relationship with new historicism. The volume is then divided into two sections corresponding to the two chief objectives of historical formalism: a historically informed and politically astute formalism, and a historicist criticism revitalized by attention to issues of form. The first section, 'Historicizing Form', explores from a variety of perspectives the historical and political sources, meanings and functions of Shakespeare's dramatic forms. The second section, 'Re-Forming History', uses questions of form to rethink our understanding of historicism and of history itself, and in doing so challenges some of our fundamental literary-critical, pedagogical and epistemological assumptions. Concluding with suggestions for further reading on historical formalism and related work, Shakespeare and Historical Formalism invites scholars to rethink the familiar categories and principles of formal and historical criticism.

Following Clifford Geertz and other cultural anthropologists, the New Historicist critics have evolved a method for describing culture in action. Their "thick descriptions" seize upon an event or anecdote--colonist John Rolfe's conversation with Pocohontas's father, a note found among Nietzsche's papers to the effect that "I have lost my umbrella"--and re-read it to reveal through the analysis of tiny particulars the motive forces controlling a whole society. Contributors: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gerald Graff, Jean Franco, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frank Lentricchia, Vincent Pecora, Jane Marcus, Jon Klancher, Jonathan Arac, Hayden White, Stanley Fish, Judith Newton, Joel Fineman, John Schaffer, Richard Terdiman, Donald Pease, Brooks Thomas.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.3, Technical University of Chemnitz, language: English, abstract: The power that makes us handle ourselves and others around us is something we do not even notice, but that is central to all our lives. While actual physical violence is far away for many of us, nobody can deny how society has a certain rule over each of us. We have expectations towards others and ourselves that are central for the way we think and behave. Cultural values do not only shape our daily lives but also every text that is written. These texts on the other hand have the power to influence our values and believe on what is wrong and right. Because I am very interested in this topic and also how texts form our picture of the world I chose to write about New Historicism. New Historicism is a literary theory that, in my opinion, everybody can understand and relate to. A central idea is how every text shows signs of the time and the society it is produced in. A logical consequence, since the author is never free of perceptions of his time and never subjective. On the other hand a text, read by many people, can easily influence their opinions and believes. For example the texts written about Queen Elisabeth contributed to her image of the Virgin Queen. These ideas, bought up as literary theory in New Historicism, are important until today. While books and theater plays might not be as important for many of us we are influenced, not only by television, but also by newspapers and articles we read. Our "self" is still created through the society we live in.