New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have become two of the most powerful and appealing movements in modern criticism. Their initial conquest of Renaissance studies has escalated into a global colonisation 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 vigour of this new critical constellation into focus for the first time.
The Introduction identifies the key concerns of both approaches, unpacks their theoretical assumptions and clarifies their chief points of convergence and antagonism. The first group of essays locates the intellectual sources of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in figures such as Foucault, Benjamin, Althusser and Derrida. The second mounts a theoretical debate between prominent exponents and opponents of both kinds of criticism, including Stephen Greenblatt, Catherine Belsey, Alan Sinfield and Catherine Gallagher. The final group carries this debate forward through a wide range of critical readings, which illustrate the impact of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism on the novels, plays and poems of authors ranging from Aeschylus to Ezra Pound.