Harold Aram Veeser Book order (chronological)

The New Historicism Reader documents the New Historicists' multiplex achievement, spanning Renaissance and Reagan studies, American realism, English romanticism, gender studies, feminism, and communications and rhetoric. Harold Veeser's introduction locates allies and opponents, surveys related fields, and identifies now-emerging New Historicist themes: the go-between, hybridization, embarrassment, autobiographical moves and personal writing. His selected bibliography gives access to a wealth of literature devoted to theorizing and attacking New Historicism, a phrase that--if it lacks a referent--has no want of references. In short, The New Historicism Reader offers everything required to know, teach and practice the New Historicism.

Following Clifford Geertz and other cultural anthropologists, the New Historicist critics have evolved a method for describing culture in action. Their "thick descriptions" seize upon an event or anecdote--colonist John Rolfe's conversation with Pocohontas's father, a note found among Nietzsche's papers to the effect that "I have lost my umbrella"--and re-read it to reveal through the analysis of tiny particulars the motive forces controlling a whole society. Contributors: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gerald Graff, Jean Franco, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frank Lentricchia, Vincent Pecora, Jane Marcus, Jon Klancher, Jonathan Arac, Hayden White, Stanley Fish, Judith Newton, Joel Fineman, John Schaffer, Richard Terdiman, Donald Pease, Brooks Thomas.