Stephen Greenblatt
Greenblatt in 2004
Born	Stephen Jay Greenblatt (1943-11-07)November 7, 1943 (age 82) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Writer professor
Language	English
Education	Yale University (BA,PhD) Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA,MA)
Subject	New Historicism,Shakespeare,Renaissance
Notable awards	National Book Award for Nonfiction,Pulitzer Prize
Spouse	Ellen Schmidt (1969–1996) Ramie Targoff (1998–)
Children	3

Stephen Jay Greenblatt (born November 7, 1943) is an American literary historian and author. He has served as theJohn Cogan University Professor of theHumanities atHarvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general editor ofThe Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the general editor and a contributor toThe Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Greenblatt is one of the founders ofnew historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture,Renaissance studies andShakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journalRepresentations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work isWill in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was onThe New York Times Best Seller list for nine weeks.^[1] He won thePulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2012 and theNational Book Award for Nonfiction in 2011 forThe Swerve: How the World Became Modern.^[2][3]

Greenblatt was born inBoston and raised inNewton, Massachusetts. After graduating fromNewton High School, he was educated atYale University (BA 1964,PhD 1969) andPembroke College, Cambridge (BA 1966, later promoted toMA), where he was aFulbright Scholar.^[4][5] Greenblatt has since taught at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, andHarvard University. He was Class of 1972 Professor at Berkeley (becoming a full professor in 1980) and taught there for 28 years before taking a position at Harvard University.^[6] He was named John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities in 2000. Greenblatt is considered "a key figure in the shift from literary to cultural poetics and from textual to contextual interpretation in U.S. English departments in the 1980s and 1990s."^[7]

Greenblatt is the founder and faculty co-chair of Harvard's branch of theScholars at Risk (SAR) program. SAR is a U.S.-based international network of academic institutions organized to support and defend the principles ofacademic freedom and to defend thehuman rights of scholars around the world.^[8][9] Greenblatt was a long-term fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.^[10] As a visiting professor and lecturer, Greenblatt has taught at institutions including theÉcole des Hautes Études, theUniversity of Florence,Kyoto University, theUniversity of Oxford andPeking University. He was a resident fellow at theAmerican Academy in Rome,^[11] and is a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (1987), theAmerican Philosophical Society (2007),^[12] and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters (2008); he has been president of theModern Language Association.^[13]

In February 2022, Greenblatt was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter toThe Harvard Crimson defending ProfessorJohn Comaroff, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies.^[14] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Greenblatt was one of several signatories to say that he wished to retract his name from the letter.^[15]

Greenblatt is an Eastern EuropeanJew, anAshkenazi, and aLitvak. His observant Jewish grandparents were born inLithuania; his paternal grandparents were fromKaunas and his maternal grandparents were fromVilnius.^[16] Greenblatt's grandparents immigrated to the United States during the early 1890s in order to escape a Czarist Russification plan toconscript young Jewish men into the Russian army.^[17]

In 1998, he married literary critic Ramie Targoff, whom he has described as his soulmate.^[4]

Greenblatt has written extensively onShakespeare, theRenaissance, culture andNew Historicism (which he often refers to as "cultural poetics"). Much of his work has been "part of a collective project", such as his work as co-editor of the Berkeley-based literary-cultural journalRepresentations (which he co-founded in 1983), as editor of publications such as theNorton Anthology of English Literature, and as co-author of books such asPracticing New Historicism (2000), which he wrote withCatherine Gallagher. Greenblatt has also written on such subjects as travelling inLaos and China,story-telling, andmiracles.

Greenblatt's collaboration withCharles L. Mee,Cardenio, premiered on May 8, 2008, at theAmerican Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the critical response toCardenio was mixed, audiences responded quite positively. The American Repertory Theater has posted audience responses on the organization's blog.Cardenio has been adapted for performance in ten countries, with additional international productions planned.^{[citation needed]}

He wrote his 2018 bookTyrant: Shakespeare on Politics out of anxiety over the2016 US presidential election.^[18][19]

Greenblatt first used the term "New Historicism" in his 1982 introduction toThe Power of Forms in the English Renaissance wherein he uses QueenElizabeth I's "bitter reaction to the revival of Shakespeare'sRichard II on the eve of the Essex rebellion" to illustrate the "mutual permeability of the literary and the historical".^[20] New Historicism is regarded by many to have influenced "every traditional period of English literary history".^[21] Some critics have charged that it is "antithetical to literary andaesthetic value, that it reduces the historical to the literary or the literary to the historical, that it denies human agency and creativity, that it is somehow out to subvert the politics of cultural and critical theory [and] that it is anti-theoretical".^[20] Scholars have observed that New Historicism is, in fact, "neither new nor historical."^[22] Others praise New Historicism as "a collection of practices" employed by critics to gain a more comprehensive understanding of literature by considering it in historical context while treating history itself as "historically contingent on the present in which [it is] constructed".^[20]

As stated by Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, the approach of New Historicism has been "the most influential strand of criticism over the last 25 years, with its view that literary creations are cultural formations shaped by 'the circulation of social energy'."^[4] When told that several American job advertisements were requesting responses from experts in New Historicism, Greenblatt remembered thinking: "'You've got to be kidding. You know it was just something we made up!' I began to see there were institutional consequences to what seemed like a not particularly deeply thought-out term."^[4]

He has also said that "My deep, ongoing interest is in the relation between literature and history, the process through which certain remarkable works of art are at once embedded in a highly specific life-world and seem to pull free of that life-world. I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago".^[23]

Greenblatt's works on New Historicism and "cultural poetics" includePracticing New Historicism (2000) (withCatherine Gallagher), in which Greenblatt discusses how "they anecdote ... appears as the 'touch of the real'" andTowards a Poetics of Culture (1987), in which Greenblatt asserts that the question of "how art and society are interrelated," as posed byJean-François Lyotard andFredric Jameson, "cannot be answered by appealing to a single theoretical stance".^[21]Renaissance Self-Fashioning and the introduction to theNorton Shakespeare are regarded as good examples of Greenblatt's application of new historicist practices.^[20]

New Historicism acknowledges that any criticism of a work is colored by the critic's beliefs, social status, and other factors. Many New Historicists begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves, their backgrounds, and their prejudices. Both the work and the reader are affected by everything that has influenced them. New Historicism thus represents a significant change from previous critical theories like New Criticism, because its main focus is to look at many elements outside of the work, instead of reading the text in isolation.

Greenblatt's work contextualizes Shakespeare against the English Renaissance as a whole, believing "that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare."^[24] In particular, as he states in "King Lear and Harsnett's 'Devil-Fiction'," Greenblatt believes that "Shakespeare's self-consciousness is in significant ways bound up with the institutions and the symbology of power it anatomizes".^[25] His work on Shakespeare has addressed such topics as ghosts, purgatory, anxiety, exorcists and revenge. He is also a general editor of theNorton Shakespeare. This New Historicism opposes the ways in whichNew Criticism consigns texts "to an autonomous aesthetic realm that [dissociates] Renaissance writing from other forms of cultural production" and the historicist notion that Renaissancetexts mirror "a coherent world-view that was held by a whole population," asserting instead "that critics who [wish] to understand sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing must delineate the ways the texts they [study] were linked to the network of institutions, practices, and beliefs that constituted Renaissance culture in its entirety".^[21] Greenblatt's work in Renaissance studies includesRenaissance Self-Fashioning (1980), which "had a transformative impact on Renaissance studies".^[20]

Greenblatt joinedM. H. Abrams as general editor ofThe Norton Anthology of English Literature published byW. W. Norton during the 1990s.^[26] He is also the co-editor of the anthology's section on Renaissance literature^[27] and the general editor of theNorton Shakespeare, "currently his most influential piece of public pedagogy."^[20]

Although it does not refer toDonald Trump directly, Greenblatt's 2018 book,Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power, was considered by literary critics in leading newspapers as criticism of the Trump administration.^[28][29][30]

• 1964–66:Fulbright scholarship
• 1975:Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1983: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1989:James Russell Lowell Prize of theModern Language Association (Shakespearean Negotiations)
• 2002: Honorary D.Litt.,Queen Mary College, University of London
• 2002: Erasmus Institute Prize
• 2002: Mellon Distinguished Humanist Award
• 2005: William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre,The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, D.C.
• 2006: Honorary degree,University of Bucharest, Romania
• 2010:Wilbur Cross Medal,Yale University
• 2011:National Book Award for Nonfiction,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
• 2011:James Russell Lowell Prize of theModern Language Association,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
• 2012:Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
• 2016: Honorary Ph.D. in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory, from theInstitute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
• 2016:Holberg Prize for outstanding scholars for work in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law or theology
• 2024:Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts^[31]

• Clarendon Lectures,University of Oxford (1988)
• Carpenter Lectures,University of Chicago (1988)
• Adorno Lectures,Goethe University Frankfurt (2006)
• Campbell Lectures,Rice University (2673 )
• Sigmund H Danziger Jr Lecture,University of Chicago (2015)
• Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series, Syracuse, New York (2015)
• Mosse Lecture Series,Humboldt University (2015)
• Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Museums, Galleries and Libraries,University of Oxford (2015)
• Shakespearean Futures Panel and Keynote Presentation,Pequot Library Association (2023)

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(May 2018)

• Greenblatt, Stephen (1965).Three modern satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.ISBN 978-0-300-00508-0.
• — (1973).Sir Walter Raleigh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.ISBN 978-0-300-01634-5.
• — (2005) [1980].Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN 978-0-226-30659-9.
• — (1989).Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN 978-0-520-06160-6.
• — (2007) [1990].Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. London: Harvard University Press.ISBN 978-0-415-77160-3.
• — (1992).Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN 978-0-226-30652-0.
• —, ed. (1992).Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. New York: Modern Language Association of America.ISBN 978-0-87352-396-7.
• with Cohen, Walter; Howard, Jean; Maus, Katharine Eisaman, eds. (2008) [1997].The Norton Shakespeare (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-92991-1.
• withGallagher, Catherine (2001).Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN 978-0-226-27935-0.
• — (2002).Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.ISBN 978-0-691-10257-3.
• — (2004).Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-05057-8.
• — (2005).The Greenblatt Reader. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.ISBN 978-1-4051-1566-7.
• — (2010).Shakespeare's Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN 978-0-226-30667-4.
• — (2011).The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-06447-6.
• — (2017).The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-24080-1.
• — (2018).Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 9780393635751.
• – with Adam Phillips (2024),Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud, Yale UP, ISBN 978-0300276367
• — (2025).Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-88227-8.

• Greenblatt, Stephen (April 2, 2015)."Shakespeare in Tehran".The New York Review of Books. RetrievedOctober 9, 2016.
• — (June 19, 2017)."The invention of sex : St. Augustine's carnal knowledge". Annals of Culture.The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 17. pp. 24–28.^[32]
• — (July 10, 2017)."If You Prick us". Annals of Culture.The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 20. pp. 34–39.^[33]

• Cultural Materialism (often contrasted with)
• Historicism
• Subversion and containment
• Literary theory

• Cadzow, Hunter; Conway, Alison; Traister, Bryce (2005)."New Historicism".Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.
• "A conversation with author Stephen Greenblatt".Charlie Rose. PBS. December 1, 2004. Archived fromthe original on March 19, 2012. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.
• Gewertz, Ken (February 2, 2006)."Greenblatt Edits 'Norton Anthology'".Harvard University Gazette. Archived fromthe original on February 8, 2012. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.
• "Greenblatt Named University Professor of the Humanities".Harvard University Gazette. September 21, 2000. Archived fromthe original on February 8, 2012.
• Greenblatt, Stephen (1989).Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN 978-0-520-06160-6.
• — (1992).Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN 978-0-226-30652-0.
• — (2002).Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.ISBN 978-0-691-10257-3.
• — (2005).The Greenblatt Reader. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.ISBN 978-1-4051-1566-7.
• — (February 5, 2013)."The Shape of a Life".The New Yorker.
• — (July 10, 2017)."Shakespeare's Cure for Xenophobia".The New Yorker.
• "Interview: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare".Booknotes. C-SPAN. November 14, 2004. Archived fromthe original on November 16, 2010. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.
• Leitch, Vincent, ed. (2001).Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-97429-4.
• "Meet the Writers: Stephen Greenblatt". Barnes & Noble. 2004. Archived fromthe original on February 10, 2012. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.
• Pieters, Jürgen, ed. (1999).Critical Self-Fashioning: Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicism. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.ISBN 978-3-631-34116-2.
• —, ed. (2001).Moments of Negotiation. The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.ISBN 978-90-5356-502-5.
• Richter, David, ed. (1988).The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Boston: Bedford Books.ISBN 978-0-312-10106-0.
• Rivkin, Julie; Ryan, Michael, eds. (2004).Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell.ISBN 978-1-4051-0696-2.
• Ruder, Debra Bradley (February 6, 1997)."Renaissance Literature Scholar to Join FAS".Harvard University Gazette. RetrievedMarch 2, 2012.

• Cardenio,American Repertory Theater
• The Cardenio Project
• The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
• Harvard Faculty profile
• The Norton Anthology of English Literature
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Booknotes interview with Greenblatt onWill in the World, November 14, 2004.
• Stephen Greenblatt, interviewed onCharlie Rose

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• National Book Award winners
• New Historicism
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