Free Essay that summarizes the essay "Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism and New Historicism" by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield.
Uploaded by Shrutisingh0913 on Oct 05, 2012
Aspect of Cultural Materialism
(summarizing the section “History versus the human condition”)
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, in their essay Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism and the New Historicism, talk about the meaning and understanding of the term Cultural Materialism during the various ages of England, tracing its trajectory from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.
Cultural Materialism, as a critical theory, was first coined by the left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams who viewed culture as a “productive process”, part of the means of production. By this, he implied that our culture comes from our material life and not the social one. Culture is a way of life and belongs to everybody and not just to the elite. This was in stark contrast to the views of Mathew Arnold who propagated the idea of “high” culture i.e. culture is only “high” culture and that forms of art constitute this “high” culture. Literature becomes one of the most significant forms therefore.
What can be inferred from the essay is that fact that the new critics introduced rigorous critical analysis of literary texts which became a part of liberal humanism. The subsequent reaction to new criticism brought about new perspective to the text. Literature is not to be privileged but is among many cultural parts. Cultural materialists threw light upon what literature is, how it is to be studied or taught, and why it is studied. This brings us to another concept which is the idealist literary criticism which believes in man’s essential nature which is primarily unchanged. Thus, literature becomes a representation of universal truths and about transcendental human condition. Idealism emphasizes that ideas come not from matter but from some other supreme power which governs us, which is often understood to be God or religion. Opposing this stands the materialist criticism which endorses the belief that matter is basic; ideas come out of matter and not vice-versa. This criticism therefore required that we read social conditions and literature together.
The authors then talk about the monological approach to new historical scholarship which might be defined as the belief that at one time in history, a dominant ideology is endorsed by the majority. This was blatantly refuted by Marxism. Dollimore and Sinfield give the example of E.M.W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture in explaining the discrepancies which existed in the concept of monological approach. They observe that Tillyard was mistaken in the sense that...