Breaking Form in Early Modern Literary Studies

Abstract

L ooking back at the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of English Literary Renaissance published in 1995 in preparation to write this piece for the journal’s fiftieth anniversary, I was struck (but not surprised) by the centrality of historicism to the “state of the field” assessments offered by that volume’s contributors. After all, as Jonathan Crewe wrote in his contribution to that issue, during its ascendency in the 1980s and 1990s, the New Historicism afforded Renaissance studies a “hegemonic moment” within the discipline of English writ large. And yet throughout the twenty-fifth anniversary issue, historicism is described primarily as a locus of conflict rather than as a shared methodological point of departure. Noting the dominance of New Historicism in the field, for instance, many of the individual essays trace a developing discord between literary and historical approaches. And several others discuss at significant length the rift (or perceived rift) between feminism and historicism. Indeed, David Bevington and Lynda Boose devote their essays in the volume to precisely this issue: Bevington describes how “confrontation became part of the story” for feminist and New Historicist scholars in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Boose warns of a “threatening backlash” against feminist scholarship in the years ahead.