I've heard the slogan of "trans-atlantic studies" applied to the pending new wave of scholarship in the early modern field, a prominent recent example being Roland Greene's "Unrequited Conquests." Cultural materialism still, it seems, holds a lot of sway, and a good overview of that is provided by Maureen Quilligan's introduction to an issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies called "Renaissance Materialities" (JMEMS, Vol. 32, no. 3, 2002). A few years old, but still interesting.
-----Original Message-----
> Date: Sat Apr 23 14:40:08 EDT 2005
> From: "David L. Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Momentum? Trajectory?
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> If slogans are wanted, I always rather liked David Kastan's
> proclamation, delivered about ten years ago at MLA, of "The New Boredom"
> in literary study. Cultural studies informed by patient archival
> drudgery, hard-nosed bibliographic and textual studies, but with a
> theoretical edige.
>
> Then there's postcolonial hybridity, history of the family, and the new
> formalism, which seeks to rehabilitate the aesthetic as a category.
>
> My money is on two prospects:
>
> 1. Anything written by Harry Berger;
>
> and
>
> 2. The Turn to Religion Turns to Theory. When the turn from New
> Historicism to Neo-Angican studies finally remembers that Derrida wrote
> extensively on religion during the last 15 years of his life, the whole
> endeavor is likely to get a lot more interesting.
>
>
>
> David Lee Miller
> Professor of English & Comparative Literature
> University of South Carolina
> Columbia, SC 29208
>
> [log in to unmask]
> 803 777-4256 (office)
> 803 777-9064 (fax)
> 803 466-3947 (cell)
>
>
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 4/23/2005 2:02:47 PM >>>
> I got that article and read it -- it's very interesting. Of course, I
> couldn't help notice that Jackson and Marotti's touted "Turn to
> Religion" sounds remarkably appropriate to our own post-9/11
> zeitgeist,
> with "The Passion of the Christ", God on the cover of Newsweek with
> some
> frequency, etc. Of course, I think Marotti and Jackson have a point
> --
> my own criticism addresses pious literature, because I think it's very
> interesting. But another thing that strikes me is that J and M's
> notion
> of where we are going seems remarkably different to Harry's. And
> neither stance attaches itself to a marketable banner headline -- it
> seems as if we refer to what we do as New Historicism, almost by
> default
> (apres la lettre?).
>
> Michael
>
> Bryan John Lowrance wrote:
>
> >Dear Michael,
> >
> >An interesting article for this is Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti,
> "The
> >Turn to Religion in Early Modern Studies," Criticism, vol, 46, n. 1.
> >(Winter 2004) pp. 167-90. It provides good bibliography and overview
> of a
> >lot of recent scholarship as well as providing some interesting
> >theoretical analysis. If your school subscribes to Project Muse,
> it's
> >available on that.
> >
> >Best,
> >
> >Bryan Lowrance.
> >
> >
> >
> >>Dear All,
> >>
> >>I'm just finishing up a project with a student on her way to grad
> >>school, and the idea is to get her oriented on graduate study
> (literary
> >>studies generally, and English Renaissance in particular). She asked
> an
> >>interesting question yesterday, which was, where are we currently?
> When
> >>I was at her stage in 1992, we all had a pretty clear idea of where
> the
> >>momentum was in literary scholarship, even though there were clearly
> >>differing schools and opinions -- all scholarship seemed to be
> >>positioned in one way or another with regard to the New Historicism.
> So
> >>I thought I'd turn the question out to the group: Is there a
> collective
> >>sense that we are operating in a particular phase of criticism --
> either
> >>as Spenserians, Sidneyans, or more generally?
> >>
> >>All the best,
> >>
> >>Michael
> >>
> >>
> >>
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