Shakespeare's History Plays: Rethinking Historicism: Rethinking HistoricismBoldly moves criticism of Shakespeare's history plays beyond anti-humanist theoretical approaches. 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, more dynamic way of reading Shakespeare as a supremely intelligent and creative political thinker, whose history plays address and illuminate the very questions with which cultural historicists have been so preoccupied since the 1980s. The book reignites old debates and re-energises recent bids to humanise Shakespeare and to restore agency to the individual in the critical readings of his plays. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 10 | |
Chapter 3 Cultural Materialism | 33 |
Chapter 4 An Argument Against Antihumanism | 52 |
Chapter 5 Solutions | 72 |
Chapter 6 Shakespeares Historical and Political Thought in Context | 84 |
Chapter 7 Personal Action and Agency in Henry VI | 122 |
Chapter 8 Ideology in Richard II and Henry IV | 174 |
Chapter 9 Conclusion | 215 |
| 218 | |
| 236 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action Alan Sinfield Althusser Althusser’s analysis anti-humanist argues argument Bolingbroke Cade Cade’s rebellion Cambridge University Press Catherine Belsey characters claims Clifford concept critics critique cultural historicism cultural historicists cultural materialism cultural materialists discourse Dollimore and Sinfield Duke early modern Edward Elizabethan England English essay example Falstaff formalism formalist Foucault Gloucester Gloucester’s Goldberg Graham Holderness Henry IV Henry VI Henry VI plays Henry’s historicism historicism and cultural historicists and cultural historiography History and Ideology honour Howard humanist Ibid ideas Ideological State Apparatus ideology individuals Jonathan Dollimore Joseph Carroll Kamps Kiernan Ryan king King’s literary Literature Louis Althusser Machiavelli Margaret Miscegenation moral Mousley Mowbray nation Oxford Phyllis Rackin political question radical reading rebels Renaissance Richard Richard II Routledge scene second tetralogy Shakespeare Shakespeare’s history plays Shakespeare’s plays social Stephen Greenblatt structural studies subjects subversion Suffolk synecdoche tetralogy texts theory throne Tillyard tion Tudor ultimately Warwick York and London