GREENBLATT’S SHAKESPEARE

In this course we will be reading Stephen Greenblatt reading Shakespeare. As one of the leading New Historicists and, according to some, the most important living Shakespearean scholar and critic, Greenblatt has had immense influence on how we read and understand Shakespeare’s works as part of a larger cultural matrix. We will be exploring Greenblatt’s notions regarding early modern cultural poetics, along with some of the most relevant Shakespearean texts, including (probably) Hamlet, King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, plus some of his poetry.

Texts:

Greenblatt, Stephen, et al. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. ISBN: 0393970876

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press; 1983. ISBN: 0226306542

Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (New Historicism, Studies in Cultural Poetics, No 84). University of California Press, 1989. ISBN 0520061608

Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0691102570

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. ISBN: 0393050572