If we come to consciousness within a language that
is complicit with the social order, how can we conceive,
let alone organize, resistance? This key question in the
politics of reading and sub cultural practice informs
Alan Sin field's book on writing in early-modern
England. New historicism has often shown people trapped
in a web of language and culture; through agile and well
informed discussions of writing by Shakespeare, Sidney,
Donne, and Marlowe, Sinfield reassesses the scope of
dissidence and control. The early-modern state,
Christianity, and the cultural apparatus, despite an
ideology of unity and explicit violence, could not but
allow space to challenging voices. Disruptions in
concepts of hierarchy, nationality, gender and sexuality
force their way into literary texts. Sinfield is often
provocative. He 'rewrites' Julius Caesar to produce a
different politics, compares Sidney's idea of poetry to
Leonid Brezhnev's, and reinstates the concept of
character in the face of post-structuralist theory. He
keeps the current politics of literary study always in
view, especially in a substantial chapter on Shakespeare
in the United States. Sin field subjects interactions
between class, ethnicity, sexuality and the professional
structures of the humanities to a detailed and
hard-hitting critique, and argues for new commitments to
collectivities and subcultures. This is a controversial,
lucid, informed, and timely book by a leading exponent
of cultural materialism.
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