GEgan_Shakespeare_and_Marx_2001.pdf (225.91 kB)
Marx the Shakespearian / Shakespeare the Marxist
journal contribution
posted on 2008-11-07, 10:01 authored by Gabriel EganMarxist cultural theory underlies much teaching in university departments of
literature and has played a crucial role in the development of recent theoretical
approaches to Shakespeare. Feminism, New Historicism, cultural materialism,
postcolonial theory, and queer theory draw upon Marx's ideas about cultural
production, and have a marked affinity with Renaissance studies. There is, however,
little open literary debate of Marx's ideas and in the popular imagination they are no
more than irrelevant utopianism. The latest book in Routledge's Accents on
Shakespeare series, Marxist Shakespeares, is a collection of essays which should
help bring Marx back into discussions of literature and it is edited by Jean Howard
(Columbia University and president of the Shakespeare Association of America,
1999-2000), and Scott Cutler Shershow (Miama University, Oxford Ohio). Admitting
the subject's limitations, Howard and Shershow want to "to push the boundaries of
Marxist thought by ongoing engagement with feminism, cultural studies, and non-
Marxist forms of historicism" (p. 3) in order to save it from dismissal as a grand
narrative toward which the knowing postmodern should remain, as Jean-François
Lyotard put it, incredulous.
History
School
- The Arts, English and Drama
Department
- English and Drama
Citation
EGAN, G., 2001. Marx the Shakespearian / Shakespeare the Marxist. Around the Globe, 17. pp. 36-37.Publisher
Shakespeare's GlobePublication date
2001Notes
This is a journal article.ISSN
1366-2317Language
- en