Can a movement that denies its existence have its canonical instances? Readers may judge for themselves whether New Historicism is a phrase without a referent. "The New Historicism Reader" documents the New Historicists' multiplex achievement, spanning Renaissance and Reagan studies, American realism, English romanticism, gender studies, feminism, and communications and rhetoric.
The essays encompass astounding variety: a wolfish High Constable dresses as a sheep to greet Queen Elizabeth; Jewish nationalism corrects "Daniel Deronda's" sinister world of art, money, and reckless women; Justices Warren and Brandeis team up with Henry James to construct American privacy; the story of a two-penny nail drives Egyptian foreign policy; a forgotten Dirty Harry motif wins George Bush an election. But as different as these essays may be, each one reads an instant when selves crossed through various zones and hybridized in a fractured field. Each essay possesses the New Historicism's signal virtue, what one critic called its "drop-dead elegant prose."
Harold Veeser's introduction locates allies and opponents, surveys related fields, and identifies now-emerging New Historicist themes: the go-between, hybridization, embarrassment, autobiographical moves, and personal writing. His selected bibliography gives access to an opulent literature devoted to theorizing and attacking New Historicism, a phrase that--if it lacks a referent--has no want of references. In short, "The Reader" offers everything required to know, teach, and practice the New Historicism.
Contributors: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Joel Fineman, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Gallop, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Greenblatt, BarbaraHarlow, Louis Montrose, Walter Benn Michaels, Stephen Orgel, Donald Pease, Michael Rogin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.