MACAT An Analysis of Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare Liam Haydon R O U T EL D G E Published by Macat International Ltd 24:13 Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road, London SW6 6AW. Distributed exclusively by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2017 by Macat International Ltd Macat International has asserted its right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the copyright holder of this work. The print publication is protected by copyright. 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CONTENTS WAYS IN TO THE TEXT Who is Stephen Greenblatt? 9 What does Renaissance Self-Fashioning Say? 10 Why does Renaissance Self-Fashioning Matter? 11 SECTION 1: INFLUENCES Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context 14 Module 2: Academic Context 18 Module 3: The Problem 22 Module 4: The Author’s Contribution 26 SECTION 2: IDEAS Module 5: Main Ideas 31 Module 6: Secondary Ideas 36 Module 7: Achievement 41 Module 8: Place in the Author’s Work 46 SECTION 3: IMPACT Module 9: The First Responses 51 Module 10: The Evolving Debate 56 Module 11: Impact and Influence Today 62 Module 12: Where Next? 66 Glossary of Terms 71 People Mentioned in the Text 76 Works Cited 83 THE MACAT LIBRARY The Macat Library is a series of unique academic explorations of seminal works in the humanities and social sciences – books and papers that have had a significant and widely recognised impact on their disciplines. 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CRITICAL THINKING AND RENAISSANCE SELF-FASHIONING Primary critical thinking skill: CREATIVE THINKING Secondary critical thinking skill: INTERPRETATION The core idea of Renaissance Self-Fashioning is that the self (personal identity and ideology) is a more-or-less deliberate construction, in response to authorities such as the church or state. To demonstrate this, Greenblatt conducts a reading of major canonical texts to show the way in which the relationship of their authors to the power structures of their day was performed and represented within the text. Consequently, writing (itself a construction of a type of self) becomes a way of understanding the self’s subjection or resistance to authority, often in ways which are not apparent at the surface of the text. Instead, writing needs to be seen as a product of the whole culture that produced it, since it will have contradictions or unconscious references to a range of other texts, ideas, and concerns. What makes Renaissance Self-Fashioning so successful is Greenblatt’s ability to put sources together in unexpected ways, seeing deep connections between a range of source materials including plays, diaries, travel accounts, religious texts, letters, and reported speeches. In this way, Greenblatt bridges the traditional divide between literary and non-literary texts to demonstrate his hypothesis – that culture and history are deeply entwined and act upon each other in complex and subtle ways. ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINAL WORK Stephen Greenblatt (b. 1943) is currently the Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Renaissance Self- Fashioning established his reputation as a leading scholar of the Renaissance. He has subsequently written a number of books on William Shakespeare, including the bestselling 2004 biography Will in the World, as well as the Renaissance period more generally. He is a former president of the Modern Language Association of America, has held a number of major grants, and has won, among other prizes, the Pulitzer Prize (2012) and the Holberg Prize (2016). ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE ANALYSIS Liam Haydon was educated at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Manchester, where he wrote a PhD on Milton’s Paradise Lost. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Centre for the Political Economies of International Commerce at the University of Kent. His work focuses on the cultural history of the seventeenth century, exploring the connections between the corporation, economic ideology, and literature. ABOUT MACAT GREAT WORKS FOR CRITICAL THINKING Macat is focused on making the ideas of the world’s great thinkers accessible and comprehensible to everybody, everywhere, in ways that promote the development of enhanced critical thinking skills. 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Its focus on works that transformed their disciplines and its rigorous approach, drawing on the world’s leading experts and educational institutions, opens up a world-class education to anyone.’ Andreas Schleicher Director for Education and Skills, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ‘Macat is taking on some of the major challenges in university education … They have drawn together a strong team of active academics who are producing teaching materials that are novel in the breadth of their approach.’ Prof Lord Broers, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge ‘The Macat vision is exceptionally exciting. It focuses upon new modes of learning which analyse and explain seminal texts which have profoundly influenced world thinking and so social and economic development. It promotes the kind of critical thinking which is essential for any society and economy. This is the learning of the future.’ Rt Hon Charles Clarke, former UK Secretary of State for Education ‘The Macat analyses provide immediate access to the critical conversation surrounding the books that have shaped their respective discipline, which will make them an invaluable resource to all of those, students and teachers, working in the field.’ Professor William Tronzo, University of California at San Diego Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com WAYS IN TO THE TEXT KEY POINTS • Stephen Greenblatt is a literary and cultural critic, and Renaissance Self-Fashioning established his reputation. • Renaissance Self-Fashioning argued that identity (in people and literature) was created by a response to state or cultural authority. • Renaissance Self-Fashioning is a classic piece of Renaissance* scholarship, and the founding text of New Historicism.* Who is Stephen Greenblatt? Stephen Greenblatt is an American scholar, now based at Harvard, who was born in 1943 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a housewife. He went to school at Yale and won a scholarship to take a year at Cambridge, before returning to pursue his graduate studies at Yale. After he completed his PhD, Greenblatt took a position as an Assistant (later full) Professor at Berkeley, California, where he wrote Renaissance Self-Fashioning. At the time university campuses were hotbeds of radical politics, with protests against the established order of things. Greenblatt was influenced by these cultural and political theorists who were examining the way in which power operated in society, and the effect it had on the individual, and he began to realize 9