Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance TextsTaking 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. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. 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" read |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 79
Page 4
... seems to be doing or saying X , but it is really doing or saying Y , " or " It doesn't matter that the text seems to be doing X because , " etc. My aim is not to discourage critics and scholars from forming hypotheses and from finding ...
... seems to be doing or saying X , but it is really doing or saying Y , " or " It doesn't matter that the text seems to be doing X because , " etc. My aim is not to discourage critics and scholars from forming hypotheses and from finding ...
Page 4
... seems 5. These terms are interestingly at variance , and each has its advantages and disad- vantages . " Renaissance " has the advantage of capturing the claim of many intellectuals in the ( let's call it ) period that something that ...
... seems 5. These terms are interestingly at variance , and each has its advantages and disad- vantages . " Renaissance " has the advantage of capturing the claim of many intellectuals in the ( let's call it ) period that something that ...
Page 4
... seems to be a historio- graphic myth . So one is left with a choice of myths - theirs or ours . 6. Judy Kronenfeld , " So Distribution Should Undo Excess , and Each Man Have Enough ' : Shakespeare's King Lear - Anabaptist Egalitarianism ...
... seems to be a historio- graphic myth . So one is left with a choice of myths - theirs or ours . 6. Judy Kronenfeld , " So Distribution Should Undo Excess , and Each Man Have Enough ' : Shakespeare's King Lear - Anabaptist Egalitarianism ...
Page 4
... seems important to acknowledge the pos- sibilities in that culture for thinking as well as enacting resistance . The texts that the last three essays treat are " resistant " in the political as well as the epistemological sense . The ...
... seems important to acknowledge the pos- sibilities in that culture for thinking as well as enacting resistance . The texts that the last three essays treat are " resistant " in the political as well as the epistemological sense . The ...
Page 4
... seems to me to have had a dogmatic as well as a critical side . I do not believe that nature and Aristotle are the same . And I share Empson's puzzlement at why , for instance , " because Macbeth is ' imi- tative , ' it can't be ...
... seems to me to have had a dogmatic as well as a critical side . I do not believe that nature and Aristotle are the same . And I share Empson's puzzlement at why , for instance , " because Macbeth is ' imi- tative , ' it can't be ...
Contents
1 | |
4 | |
SelfConsumption | 27 |
Theory | 42 |
New Historicism | 67 |
Impossible Worldliness Devout Humanism | 83 |
Impossible Transcendence | 109 |
Impossible Radicalism I Donne and Freedom of Conscience | 118 |
Impossible Radicalism II Shakespeare and Disobedience | 165 |
Impossible Radicalism and Impossible Value Nahum Tates King Lear | 203 |
INDEX | 233 |
Other editions - View all
Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts Richard Strier Limited preview - 1995 |
Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts Richard Strier Limited preview - 2023 |
Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts Richard Strier Limited preview - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
Absalom and Achitophel argue argument assertion Bacon behavior Burton Cambridge Castellio chap Christian Church-porch conscience context Cordelia Coriolanus Cornwall courtier critic critique cultural deconstruction devout humanism distinction Donne's Eagleton early modern Edmund Elizabethan emphasis England English Erasmus essay Exclusion Crisis Fish Fish's Folio George Herbert Gloucester Gloucester's Goneril Greenblatt Hamlet Helen Gardner historical Historicism J. H. Hexter John Donne Kent King Lear language Lear's Leontes lines literary London Luther mean metaphor moral obedience Oswald Oxford perhaps philosophical phrase Phrygius poem Poetry political Ponet position prince Protestant question radical reading rebellion Reformation Regan Religion religious Renaissance resistance rhetoric Richard Richard II Satire III scene Schoenfeldt seems sense Shakespeare social Sonnets soul Stanley Fish stanza Stephen Greenblatt Strier suggest Tate Tate's Lear Tate's play Theory thou tradition trans true truth Tuve Tuve's University Press Utopia Whigs William Empson York