The Uses of the Canon Elizabethan Literature and Contemporary Theory [Paperback]

An important contribution to the current rethinking of English, and to the reconsideration of Shakespeare's role within it, this book focuses on the emergence of the New Historicism, clarifying a number of key positions in the criticism of the past fifteen years. The essays subject many of New Historicism's most challenging claims to rigorous analysis, distinguish sharply between its American and British versions, and assess the causes and consequences of its politicization of literary studies. The theoretical and political issues at stake in current debates are clearly examined, and the uses served by the canonical texts at their center are reexamined within a broad cultural and historical perspective. Offering fresh readings of a number of classic texts--includingHamlet,The Winter's Tale,The Tempest, Shakespeare's sonnets, More'sUtopia, Donne's poetry, and Conrad'sHeartof Darkness--this overview of contemporary critical theory and practice provides a deepened understanding of the complex and changing functions of the canon itself.

A series of inclusionary, and, paradoxically, exclusionary deconstructive readings that are rich, exciting, and highly suggestive....This important book is a refreshing and stimulating foundation upon which much future work will undoubtedly be constructed. --English Language Notes

Should keep open one of the most burning theoretical issues of the 1980s. --Studies in English Literature

[Felperin's] book is a valuable one and should be read by anyone who professes an interest in recent theory or in the uncertain relationship between text and context....Provocative and instructive. --Canadian Review of Comparative Literature