New Historicism & Cultural Materialism

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have become two of the most powerful and appealing movements in modern criticism. Their conquest of Renaissance studies has escalated into global colonization of English and American literary history. A wealth of innovative work has emerged on everything from the "Canterbury Tales" to the "Cantos," bringing intense theoretical controversy in its wake. This Reader pulls the diversity and polemical vigor of this new critical constellation into focus for the first time.