1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910495968403321

Autore

Strier Richard

Titolo

Resistant structures : particularity, radicalism, and Renaissance texts / / Richard Strier

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [1995]

©1995

ISBN

0-520-91921-1

0-585-26164-4

Edizione

[Reprint 2019]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (256 p.)

Collana

The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics ; ; 34

Disciplina

820.9/003

Soggetti

English literature - History and criticism - Theory, etc - Early modern, 1500-1700

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism - Theory, etc

Literature and history - History - 16th century - England

Literature and history - History - 17th century - England

Literature and history - England - History - 16th century

Literature and history - England - History - 17th century

Particularity (Aesthetics)

Particularité (Esthétique)

Radicalism in literature

Renaissance - Angleterre

Renaissance - England

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- ESSAY 1. "Tradition" -- ESSAY 2. ''Self- Consumption" -- ESSAY 3. "Theory" -- ESSAY 4. "New Historicism" -- ESSAY 5. Impossible Worldliness -- ESSAY 6. Impossible Radicalism I -- ESSAY 7. Impossible Radicalism II -- ESSAY 8. Impossible Radicalism and Impossible Value -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Taking Wittgenstein's "Don't think, but look" as his motto, Richard Strier argues against the application of a priori schemes to Renaissance



(and all) texts. He argues for the possibility and desirability of rigorously attentive but "pre-theoretical" reading. His approach privileges particularity and attempts to respect the "resistant structures" of texts. He opposes theories, critical and historical, that dictate in advance what texts must--or cannot--say or do.    The first part of the book, "Against Schemes," demonstrates, in discussions of Rosemond Tuve, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Fish among others, how both historicist and purely theoretical approaches can equally produce distortion of particulars. The second part, "Against Received Ideas," shows how a variety of texts (by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and others) have been seen through the lenses of fixed, mainly conservative ideas in ways that have obscured their actual, surprising, and sometimes surprisingly radical content.