The Structure of Structures

Ok, Greenblatt is important, so let’s look at Greenblatt.

I was taken by Greenblatt’s insistence on locating a structure within literature which will provide “insight into the half-hidden cultural transactions through which great works of art are empowered” (4). This interested me because I immediately thought of Benjamin and Bourdieu.

I wondered if Benjamin would disagree with the emphasis that Greenblatt places on the “aura” of certain pieces literature as works of art. I think that perhaps Greenblatt’s interest in analyzing the energia or the ability to “produce, shape, and organize collective physical and mental experiences, present in Shakespeare’s plays in partially what Benjamin was fearful of.

On a completely different train of thought, I saw Bourdieu’s theory of political representation being applied to the author. (I’d like to use direct quotes from Bourdieu here, but someone walked out with my book last Tuesday; I want it back.) Just as Bourdieu describes the dialectical nature of the power structure shared between the representative and the people as being reciprocal, Greenblatt describes the power structure between the author and the text in the same way. Greenblatt first uses the political example of the prince and his subjects and then points out that “the theatre is manifestly the product of collective intentions”, rather than the product of a single author, and “all [authors are] dependent upon collective genres, narrative patterns, and linguistic conventions” (4, 5). Through this process, the society of authors produce texts, which are influenced by previous texts, and the products of these authors will serve as the further influence for the next series of texts.

I hope that these connections read more clearly in your heads than when I read them aloud. I can’t help but highlight the connections I now see between almost all of the theorists we read, and I would like to talk more about them in class where I might receive help verbalizing my thoughts.