Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts Volume 34 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780520209053)

Taking Wittgenstein's "Don't think, but look" as his motto, Richard Strier argues against the application of a priori schemes to Renaissance (and all) texts. He argues for the possibility and desirability of rigorously attentive but "pre-theoretical" reading. His approach privileges particularity and attempts to respect the "resistant structures" of texts. He opposes theories, critical and historical, that dictate in advance what texts must--or cannot--say or do.

The first part of the book, "Against Schemes," demonstrates, in discussions of Rosemond Tuve, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Fish among others, how both historicist and purely theoretical approaches can equally produce distortion of particulars. The second part, "Against Received Ideas," shows how a variety of texts (by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and others) have been seen through the lenses of fixed, mainly conservative ideas in ways that have obscured their actual, surprising, and sometimes surprisingly radical content.

Author: Richard Strier
ISBN-10: 0520209052
ISBN-13: 9780520209053
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 03/31/1997
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.04h x 6.03w x 0.82d