Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-10T13:48:13.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Negotiation and New Historicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Theodore B. Leinwand
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The rhetoric and the models of social process that inform much of the work of new historicists and cultural materialists in the field of English Renaissance studies are governed by a subversion-containment binarism. While conceptualizations of the operations of power based on this binarism (and its underlying Foucauldian vocabulary) have generated important insights, it may prove useful to reconceive conflict as negotiation, exchange, and accommodation. The Elizabethan English constable, representing a flexible deployment of power, offers us an alternative to repressive masters and subversive peasants. His role in Shakespearean drama and his characteristic malapropisms suggest that aristocrats and common folk were together enmeshed in what Anthony Giddens calls a “dialectic of control”.

Type
Special Topic: The Politics of Critical Language
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 3 , May 1990 , pp. 477 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allen, John A. “Dogberry.” Shakespeare Quarterly 24 (1973): 35–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barroll, Leeds. “A New History for Shakespeare and His Time.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 441–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, Harry Jr. “Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado about Nothing.” Shakespeare Quarterly 33 (1982): 302–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Texas: Scott, 1980.Google Scholar
Boulton, Jeremy. Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, John, and Styles, John, eds. An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Bristol, Michael. “Lenten Butchery: Legitimation Crisis in Coriolanus.” Howard and O'Connor 207–24.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: New York UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Cartelli, Thomas. “Ideology and Subversion in the Shakespeare Set Speech.” ELH 53 (1986): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockburn, J.S., ed. Crime in England 1550–1800. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Cohen, Walter. Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Curtis, T.C. “Quarter Sessions Appearances and Their Background: A Seventeenth-Century Regional Study.” Cock-burn 135–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Ed. LePre, Ernest. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. 433–46.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan. “Introduction: Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism and the New Historicism.” Dollimore and Sinfield 2–17.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan. “Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure.” Dollimore and Sinfield 72–87.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan, and Sinfield, Alan, eds. Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Fletcher, A.J., and Stevenson, J. Introduction. Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Ed. Fletcher and Stevenson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985. 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Frank Freeman. The Politics of Stability: A Portrait of the Rulers in Elizabethan London. London: Royal Historical Soc, 1977.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life” Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. Ed. Rieff, Philip. New York: Collier, 1963. 58–70.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley: U of California P, 1979.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Trans. Tedeschi, John and Tedeschi, Anne. New York: Penguin, 1982.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Jonathan. “The Politics of Renaissance Literature: A Review Essay.” ELH 49 (1982): 514–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion.” Glyph 8 (1981): 40–61. Rpt. in Dollimore and Sinfield 18–47.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.Google Scholar
Gulliver, P.H.Disputes and Negotiations. New York: Academic, 1979.Google Scholar
Gyffon, James. “The Song of the Constable.” The Elizabethan Under-world. Ed. Judges, A.V. London: Routledge, 1930. 488–90.Google Scholar
Hegel, G.W.F.The Phenomenology of Mind. Trans. J.B. Baillie. London: Allen, 1949.Google Scholar
Herrup, Cynthia B.The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, Derek. Authority and Conflict: England, 1603–1658. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Howard, Jean E. “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in ”Much Ado about Nothing.“ Howard and O'Connor 163–87.Google Scholar
Howard, Jean E., and Marion, F. O'Connor, eds. Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. New York: Methuen, 1987.Google Scholar
Hoy, David Couzens, ed. Foucault: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.Google Scholar
Hoy, David Couzens, ed. “Power, Repression, Progress: Foucault, Lukes, and the Frankfurt School.” Hoy 123–47.Google Scholar
Ingram, M.J. “Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire.” Cockburn 110–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Jeffrey C.Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Kastan, David Scott. “Proud Majesty Made a Subject: Shakespeare and the Spectacle of Rule.” Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 459–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, Joan R. “Attitudes of Members of the House of Commons to the Regulation of ‘Personal Conduct’ in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England.” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973): 46–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, Joan R.The English Village Constable 1580–1642: A Social and Administrative Study. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.Google Scholar
King, Walter N.“Much Ado about Something.” Shakespeare Quarterly 15 (1964): 143–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krieger, Elliot. “Social Relations and the Social Order in Much Ado about Nothing.” Shakespeare Survey 32 (1979): 49–61.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Leinwand, Theodore B. “‘I Believe We Must Leave the Killing Out’: Deference and Accommodation in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Renaissance Papers (1986): 11–30.Google Scholar
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text.” Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts. Ed. Parker, Patricia and Quint, David. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 303–40.Google Scholar
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History.” English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 5–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moretti, Franco. “‘A Huge Eclipse’: Tragic Form and the Deconsecration of Sovereignty.” Genre 15.1–2 (1982): 7–40.Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel. Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1984.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. “Foucault and the Imagination of Power.” Hoy 149–55.Google Scholar
Scott, James C.Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Harbage, Alfred. New York: Penguin, 1956.Google Scholar
Sharpe, J.A.Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750. London: Longman, 1984.Google Scholar
Sharpe, J.A. “Enforcing the Law in the Seventeenth-Century English Village.” Crimeand the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500. Ed. Gatrell, V.A.C., Lenman, Bruce, and Parker, Geoffrey. London: Europa, 1980. 97–119.Google Scholar
Sharpe, J.A. “The People and the Law.” Popular Culture in Seventeenth Century England. Ed. Reay, Barry. New York: St. Martin's, 1985. 244–70.Google Scholar
Sharpe, J.A. “‘Such Disagreement betwyx Neighbours’: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England.” Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West. Ed. Bossy, John. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. 167–87.Google Scholar
Skura, Meredith. “New Interpretations for Interpretation in Measure for Measure.” Boundary 27 (1979): 39–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smart, Barry. “The Politics of Truth and the Problem of Hegemony.” Hoy 157–73.Google Scholar
Stallybrass, Peter, and White, Allon. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986.Google Scholar
Stone, Lawrence. “Interpersonal Violence in English Society 1300–1900.” Past and Present 101 (1983): 22–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Underdown, David. Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.Google Scholar
Walter, John. “Grain Riots and Popular Attitudes to the Law: Maldon and the Crisis of 1629.” Brewer and Styles 47–84.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. “The Politics of Freedom.” Hoy 51–68.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Richard P.Shakespeare's Development and the Problem Comedies: Turn and Counter-turn. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.Google Scholar
Williams, Penry. The TUdor Regime. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: NLB-Doubleday, 1980.Google Scholar
Williamson, Marilyn L.Patriarchy in Shakespeare's Comedies. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard. “‘Is This a Holiday?‘: Shakespeare's Roman Carnival.” ELH 54 (1987): 31–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wrightson, Keith. “Alehouses, Order and Reformation in Rural England, 1590–1660.” Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590–1914. Ed. Eileen, Yeo and Yeo, Stephen. Sussex: Harvester, 1981. 1–27.Google Scholar
Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580–1680. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Wrightson, Keith. “Two Concepts of Order: Justice, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England.” Brewer and Styles 21–46.Google Scholar