The Importance of Anti-Semitism

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The Taming of the Shrew is a very disturbingly misogynistic play. Merchant of Genesis is a disturbingly anti-Semitic play. The greatest artists are not innocent, I mean, they reflect the values of their world and their time. They think about them, the great ones that we care about. Shakespeare is a perfect example. Manage, Shakespeare is not an enlightenment artist. He's not writing to try to make people who live in 0-238 feel great about every one of their opinions being validated. But on the other hand, because he's a great artist, he actually manages to explore and to unsettle the things that he seems to be also exploiting.

An infinite number of things happen; we bring structure and meaning to the world by making art and telling stories about it. Every work of literature created by human beings comes out of an historical and cultural context, and drawing connections between art and its context can be illuminating for both. Today’s guest, Stephen Greenblatt, is one of the world’s most celebrated literary scholars, famous for helping to establish the New Historicism school of criticism, which he also refers to as “cultural poetics.” We talk about how art becomes entangled with the politics of its day, and how we can learn about ourselves and other cultures by engaging with stories and their milieu.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Stephen Greenblatt received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University. He is currently Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has specialized in Renaissance and Shakespeare studies, but has also written on topics as diverse as Adam and Eve and the ancient Roman poet Lucretius. He has served as the editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Norton Shakespeare, and is founder of the journal Representations. Among his many honors are the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation. His most recent book is Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.