Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (New Historicism) - Hardcover

Strier, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520089154 ISBN 13: 9780520089150

Publisher: Univ of California Pr, 1995

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

"Resistant Structures manages to be both stunning and sensible. . . .The book is an erudite, sensitive, and theoretically provocative experiment in political criticism, at once radical and rigorous, which will be of lasting value to all students of English Renaissance literature." (Debora Shuger, author of The Renaissance Bible)

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of California Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0520089154
• ISBN 13: 9780520089150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 239