Greenblatt, Stephen. "Towards a Poetics of Culture." The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram
Veeser. New York. Routledge, 1989. 1-13.

In his writing, Stephen Greenblatt seeks to reveal the relationship between texts and their sociohistorical contexts. He assumes that texts not only document the social forces that inform and constitute history and society but also feature prominently in the social processes themselves which form both individual identity and the sociohistorical situation. He focuses on their relationship between.text and context and between art and society.
In the essay, "Towards a Poetics of Culture," he examines the ideas of the Marxist Fredric Jameson and the poststructuralist Jean-Francois Lyotard. In his view a poem should be looked at as poetry as well as looking at the way it is informed by the sociohistorical context and the ways in which it acquires its meaning. Poetry and history are both a part of the creative force that pervades all forms of human activity.
.According to Greenblatt, Jameson attempts to justify a materialist integration of all discourses and doesn't wish. to recognize a separate artistic sphere. The capitalist distinction between poetic and socio-political texts reinforces segregation of private and public, the psychological and the social. Capitalism seems to be the cause of repressing differences.
Also, in Greenblatt's view, Lyotard is primarily interested in the differences in all discourses. The differences are based on the existence of proper names. Lyotard says that capitalism questions the differences trying to coin a single language and a single network. Capitalism causes a false unity and is an agent of totalization.
Greenblatt feels that both these views are inaccurate. He argues against Jameson saying that capitalism causes all discourse to be shared. He argues against Lyotard saying that capitalism contributes to individuality. The differences and organization are both contradictory effects of a capitalistic society. According to Greenblatt, the power of capitalism lies in the fluctuation between difference and totality. The establishment of "distinct discourse domains and the collapse of those domains into one another" (9) characterizes capitalistic societies from the sixteenth century onwards.
The directional changes between totalization and differences and between uniformity and diversity has two consequences regarding textuality. First, discourse changes the confines of the text as a part of all social practice. Second, a given text is not only a fragment of an overall discourse, but it is also subject to the cultural arguments that fashion it and is suspended between the two extremes. Greenblatt hopes to change the division of the economic and non-economic, to show that disinterested and self-sacrificing practices, including art, aim to maximize material or symbolic profit.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology, Volume H. Trans. Monique Layton.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.

In the original Structural Anthropology, Levi-Strauss argues that many systems of communication. such as kinship, myth, and economics can be analyzed using the structuralist method. He proposes that an analogy can be drawn between language and culture because both are constructed of oppositions, correlations, and logical relations.
Claude Levi-Strauss is widely viewed as the chief leader among critics who 'view structuralism as an interdisciplinary, international theoretical movement. His best known contributions are to the studies of the economics of kinship systems, the structural analysis of myth and of "primitive" knowledge and aesthetics. As a theorist, he changed the relationship between anthropology and linguistics by treating linguistics as a theoretical framework for anthropological inquiry, rather than using it only as a descriptive fieldwork tool.
The second book brings together texts from Levi-Strauss that enable a reader to get a "bird's eye view" of the problems of modern cultures through their historical development and to be introduced to the way structural anthropology tackles these problems and attempts to solve them. Many of the articles were written both before and after the publication of the first book in 1957. The eighteen essays have been selected and ordered to look at the problems but also serve as an introduction to the methods of structural anthropology and a look at the theories of Levi-Strauss.
Part One looks at the past by defining the field of anthropology and the future by putting into perspective the questions proposed. It looks at the origin, scope, and future of social and cultural anthropology. Part Two looks at examples that might help to overcome some theoretical and practical difficulties related to social organization and attitudes linked to kinship systems. It presents two important essays on kinship: "The Meaning and Use of the Notion of Model" and "Reflections on the Atom of Kinship."
Part three looks at mythology and ritual and a theoretical attempt to distinguish between structuralism and formalism. Concrete examples are used to show that variants of one or several myths that can appear different can be reduced to many stages of the same group of transformations, as can the corresponding rituals among the same or among different peoples. He also illustrates the way a myth can decline into legendary tradition, romantic narrative, or political ideology. It also contains the important essays, "The Story of Asdiwal." and "How Myths Die."
Part Four reviews the various problems which contemporary societies face in many areas: literature, fine arts, and urban life. He stresses the humanistic dimension of cultural anthropology. Attention is given to the organization of research and teaching in the human and social sciences and to obstacles against progress. The essay "Race and History" was first published in 1952. The wide prospective of the essay examines the relations between race and history, on one hand, and the question. of nature, and the meaning of progress on the other.
According to Levi-Strauss, the most often used objection to structural anthropology is that its hypothesis cannot be "falsified." He feels that this is not a justifiable criticism since anthropology itself is not an established science. Since anthropology is a human science, he doubts that the criterion of "falsifiability" can be applied to it. With human sciences, there is no discussion about the validity of various hypotheses. Man who studies himself as he practices human sciences will allow his preferences and prejudices to interfere in the way that he defines himself to himself. Philosophical choices, not scientific decisions, will prevent falsification of hypotheses of human sciences. In the study of human sciences, a hypothesis only possesses a relative value if it can account for more facts than the ideas that it replaces.
Levi-Strauss’ essay "Race and Theory" states that cumulative history is caused by the behavior of races and cultures rather than from their nature. It demonstrates a way of life in the cultures, a way of being together. Cumulative history characterizes social organisms made up of groups of societies. Static history resembles an inferior life which relates to isolated societies. Aloneness can afflict a human group preventing it from completely fulfilling its nature. In the author's view, civilization implies a coexistence of cultures offering a maximum of diversity. World civilization is a coalition of cultures, each preserving its originality.
Levi-Strauss feels that all cultural progress is a function of a coalition among the cultures. The societies put together the chances that are meet by each culture in its historical development. This coalition is more productive when it exists among more diversified cultures. In fulfilling diversity requirements to bring about progress, a blending of resources occurs. Over time, since diversity is important, chances of success become less. However, there seems to be two remedies.
The first remedy is for each society to create contrasting features. Each society is composed of a coalition of Groups—religious, professional, and economic, and the social stake is made up of the stakes of all these elements. The example of capitalism and social inequalities demonstrate this solution.
The second remedy consists of introducing, haphazardly, new external partners into the coalition. These stakes would be very different from those characterized by the initial association similar to imperialism and colonialism. In both cases, the remedies enlarge the coalition, either by internal diversification or through the inclusion of new partners. The aim is always to return to the complexity and diversity of the initial situation by increasing the number of players.
Exploitation exists only within a coalition. Contacts and exchanges are produced between dominating and dominated groups. They join their stakes and reduce their differences thus allowing social improvements and the gradual accession of colonized peoples to independence. A third solution would be the appearance of antagonistic political and social powers in the world. Men must collaborate to bring about progress. The collaboration causes a pooling of contributions whose initial diversity made the collaboration necessary.
According to Levi-Strauss, the existing institutions must join mankind and make the regeneration of the extinct diversities as safe as possible. Although they can infect the international body, they must assist the birth of other forms of adaptation. However, these new forms cannot simply reproduce the old forms, but must improve them. Mankind must promote unification while maintaining diversification. The importance of preserving the diversity of cultures is, to Levi-Strauss, the continuation of a dynamic attitude of understanding and promotion of a contribution to a greater generosity of others.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001

Stephen Greenblatt says of William Shakespeare's Hamlet that he "wanted to know where he [Shakespeare] got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter" (4). In this book, Greenblatt studies the history of Purgatory as both a belief and an institution and its many views and changes during the mid-sixteenth century. He looks at the spiritual and social customs that influenced Shakespeare's ideas of death, hell, and punishment. Greenblatt looks at Christian, primarily Catholic theology, but Shakespeare had to endure the various changes in culture that related to Purgatory and still use the idea in a non-offensive manner.
Since there is a great ambiguity of feeling and belief about Purgatory in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century England, that ambiguity is also reflected in Shakespeare's Ghost of King Hamlet and the burial of Ophelia. Greenblatt looks at 17th century human nature and a haunted human memory to give a historical interpretation of beliefs about death and Purgatory.
Originally the belief in Purgatory was a way for Catholics to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Protestant beliefs and authorities declared the belief false and banned the religious practices that aided the journey. In the past, Purgatory seemed to be a method of negotiating with the dead. Although the Protestant attacks destroyed outward displays of this belief, those attacks did not destroy inner longings and fears promoted by the Catholic Church for years. Greenblatt suggests that Shakespeare changed this human desire to commune with, assist, and be rid of the dead
Greenblatt looks at medieval religion, interprets several apparitions that haunt Shakespeare's heroes, and explores the culture that causes many of these beliefs. He uses primarily Saint Patrick's Purgatory, The Gast of Gy, and the Supplication of Souls, along with requiem masses to establish his views. He studies theological differences, but he also delays a direct literary analysis of Hamlet to establish his argument.
According to Greenblatt, Shakespeare's use of ghost scenes onstage is a sign of deep interest. The dramatic use of ghosts allows Shakespeare to use a number of traditional beliefs: the classical Hades, the popular Hell, the banned domain of Catholic Purgatory, and the common view of uncertainty about the very possibility of ghosts. The figure of the ghost is used often in Shakespeare's plays and raises theological, psychological, and theatrical questions to which he never provides definitive answers. He uses ghosts in different ways illustrating the changing perspectives of the ghost as a figure of false evidence, a figure of history's nightmare, a figure of deep psychic disturbance, and a figure of theater (157).
Again, according to Greenblatt, the inward compulsion of Hamlet to over think the situation is contrary to the act of murder that he wishes to commit to gain his revenge. However, Hamlet's indecisiveness, one of the most debated points of the play, is seen in Hamlet's first response to the Ghost and is in answer to the Ghost's command of "Remember me" (208). At this point the play shifts in emphasis from vengeance to remembrance. (208)
In addition, to the delay because of Hamlet's doubts about the reliability of the Ghost's account of King Hamlet's murder, Hamlet delays his first chance to kill Claudius because he wishes to send Claudius straight to Hell. Death at the moment of confession
would give Claudius the right to go to Heaven. Tudor and Stuart texts allow Shakespeare to use a belief in Purgatory as a "sly jest, a confidence trick, a mistake, ... or a fable or a story" (236), but not as a reality. Shakespeare uses many illusions, but doesn't go far enough. to get into trouble.
However, the second problem is that the souls in Purgatory were saved. The old Hamlet died without last rites and with earthly sins that needed to be burned away, but he could not commit new sins. Purgatory is compatible with a Christian and Catholic call for remembrance, but the call for vengeance is premeditated murder and could only come from Hell. Greenblatt speculates whether the Ghost is actually that of the old Hamlet in Purgatory or in Hell. (237)
The play itself forces together a large number of incompatible accounts of almost everything that matters: sanity and insanity, the primary reason for the delay, Gertrude's innocence, the truth of the account of the old king's murder, the location of the Ghost in Purgatory or Hell. It shows that a Catholic ghost haunts a Protestant Shakespeare. Shakespeare can use the stage to maintain the longings and fears included in negotiating with the dead that had been destroyed by the Protestant attack on the "middle state of souls" (256). Although there is a lack of evidence to show that theatre has added to its use the old system in which spirits solicit prayers and indulgences to gain liberation from the pain of Hell, there are numerous lines in Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that still refer to Catholic theology and the church's spiritual power to administer punishment for sin.

Response #2

Mark Twain himself was not always successful at business so his occupations included that of riverboat captain, newspaper reporter, and author. Twain himself seem to have his own form of self-fashioning in the writing of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His constant movement across the then vastness of America allowed him to meet all types of Americans and to become familiar with all of their virtues and vices. His movement could be paralleled to that of the river that in the novel represents peacefulness and freedom. Huck’s innocence and goodness is in opposition to the corruptness of the 1884 society in which Twain lived. Twain could also be searching for his own freedom as a writer since his mother and wife were products of a traditional society that opposed personal freedom. The 13-year-old Huck Finn could make observations and comments about society that the adult Twain could not. Greenblatt’s other in this situation could be the falseness of the Victorian American society and an organized religion that condoned slavery and personal vendettas that approved murder. These elements have the power to control Jim’s freedom from slavery, Huck’s freedom from civilization, and Twain’s freedom from society’s restrictions of his writing style, language, and subject.

Response #1

In “Discipline and Punish,” Foucault discusses the prison system and the authority illustrated there as a form of power that could be represented by family, religion, state laws, society, and work. Greenblatt discusses the idea of different authorities and different “others” in existence at the same time. Williams seems to see culture as a study of the dangers involving industry, democracy, class, and art. Work has influenced a class system that produces a number of inequalities that writers express in literature and other forms of artistic practice. We do learn much about a time period from its texts. However, much of what an author writes is a reflection of his/her reaction to the historical aspects of that time. Much of our interpretation of that text is our reaction to the events of our own time period. Yes, I do agree that discourse can shape the application of power.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Tran. Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge: M. I. T.
Press, 1965.

Bakhtin's book traces, through Rabelais's writings, the history of the carnival from medieval times to the Renaissance. Bakhtin declares that Rabelais focused his art on the folk culture found in the common market place and interprets Rabelais's laughter motif, often expressed in images of bodily functions such as eating and defecation, as a reaction against abstract or transcend ent ideas. The book originated as Bakhtin's dissertation and explores how festival or carnival improves the world by weakening certain kinds of hierarchies and allowing new connections. The process is often a story of death and rebirth, where the required death becomes an elaborate production.
In ancient Roman festivals, the king may have already been executed while the Renaissance carnivals only pretend the killing of the king. In the "carnival-like" world of novels, Bakhtin emphasizes that the characters do not always die. Bakhtin was writing in a Russia ruled by Stalin, so he tried to make his carnival mockery at authority unthreatening in an attempt to allow readers to see a tolerant period.
Contrasts are seen with the custom of the common people and the high culture of church and authority. In the period of Rabelais, the elite shared in popular culture. Bakhtin makes three major comparisons in his study. The first view is praise of the poor and reproach of the rich which is similar to the Marxist theory and which allowed Bakhtin’s dissertation to be passed by a communist university. The second view of ridiculing of authority criticized Stalinism indirectly. Thirdly, for Bakhtin "carnival" becomes a reinterpretation of the Christian Passion and Resurrection.
The book uses descriptions of distorted or mutilated bodies. Renaissance carnivals ended the idea of using flesh as enjoyment through deprivation and a parade of bodies too deformed for conventional desire. Bakhtin sees the "regenerative potential" of carnival, as its ability to "combat terror." Carnival atmosphere allows pleasures in mass living and also the possibility of subversion of authority.
Bakhtin, in Rabelais and His World, investigates and compares verbal, pictorial, and gestural sign systems. His goal is to try to find a common link between the medieval and Renaissance cultures represented by the work of Rabelais and the treatment of them as systems of multiform signs. Since laughter in the forms of folk rites and festivities seem to be the connector, Rabelais' signs are directed toward the folk culture of the marketplace of the MiddleAges and Renaissance. Bakhtin goes beyond the culture to use the results for sociological studies.
However, since Bakhtin was writing of a Soviet Union ruled by Stalin, he was not free to say or write exactly what tie wanted. Critics warn the reader to be aware of information that may be left out and may be distorted because of the political reality in the Soviet Union. (Booker 105). Some of Bakhtin's points try to avoid controversy, and he includes many subversive points on Stalinism. Critics believe Bakhtin's description of the rigid, humorless, and authoritarian practices of the medieval Catholic Church are veiled comments on Stalinism. Critics also believe that Bakhtin's commentary on the "intrinsic multiplicity and ideological diversity of language and on the evolutionary nature of history" can be read as responses to Stalinist totalitarian utopianism. (Booker 105)
Bakhtin's carnival is a celebration where normal social boundaries and backgrounds are nonexistent and are totally contradictory to the official world of medieval Catholicism. He emphasizes that Rabelais' use of treatment of the aspects of human life such as sex and excrement give humans the status of physical creatures living in a physical world. According to Bakhtin, this transfer of material from the body's interior to the outside world makes human beings a part of that world. He also emphasizes that placing the functions of the higher part of the body over the lower is similar to systems that classify both bodily functions and literary works. This trend displays the view of social domination of opposed groups by ruling ones.
In the book, Bakhtin depicts the carnival as a suspension from the normal flow of events, a disruption in the ordinary flow of affairs. He suggests that the removal from history provides a perspective from which history can be understood. Bakhtin's view of a characteristic of society is the way it thinks about time and space, and this characteristic is reflected in the literature of that society. He feels that the use of the carnival of Rabelais represents a correspondence to an intense sense of cultural crisis in the early Renaissance cultural context in which Rabelais lived.
In his introduction, Bakhtin explains the division of folk culture into 3 forms: (1) carnival pageants and comic shows of the marketplace (2) oral and written parodies in Latin and in. the vernacular (3) curses, oaths, and popular displays. He describes each, but focuses on the work of Rabelais as "an encyclopedia of folk culture" (58) and also the history of laughter. According to Bakhtin, looking at Rabelais in relation to folk culture reveals the life of the Middle Ages of which. Rabelais was a major part. Looking at the language of laughter of the renaissance also allows a view of the folk humor of other ages.

.Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an.
Investigation)". Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New
York: Monthly Review, 1971. 127-186.

Althusser's main concept is that of "interpellation" or the "hailing of the subject" which is the process through which individuals are formed as subjects by powerful forces working in the interest of the prevailing ideology of a given society. For Althusser, our attitudes form us rather than being formed by us, and "the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects" (171).
According to Althusser, the process of interpellation allows the existing power structure to maintain its control over the general population without using violence or force. This process occurs in subtle-word ways through what Althusser calls "Ideological State Apparatuses," including official culture and such institutions as churches and schools; however, the physical force represented by the “Repressive State Apparatus” of the police and the military backs it up. He sees ideology as a shaping factor in the development of an individual identity. Ideology can be an illusion that hides the truth of social practices and the material context within which these practices are carried out. His goal is to understand and delineate the workings of ideology so that the individual subjects can interact with ideology in more critical and productive ways.
For Althusser, there is a distinction between state power and state control. The power is maintained by repressive structures such as law courts, prisons, police forces, and the army, which all usually operate by external force. The power of the state is maintained subtly by seeming to secure the internal consent of its citizens, using what Althusser calls ideological state apparatuses such as political parties, schools, the media, churches, the family, and art (including literature.) These groupings foster an ideology, a set of ideas and attitudes, which is agreeable to the aims of the state and the political status quo. These beliefs enable the citizen to feel the idea of freedom of choice even when the choice is being imposed on the citizen. Using Althusser's idea of interpellation, democracy makes the citizen feel he has a choice in the kind of government he has. The practice demonstrates that differences between political parties, once in power, are far fewer than the rhetorical differences between them. Any ideological power is more significant than material power.
The most dominant position of an ideological state apparatus in a capitalist social function, in Althusser's view, is the educational apparatus. The result of all state apparatuses is the reproduction of the methods of production, and each contributes in a way that is proper to it. Each apparatus has a dominant theme of interest such as nationalism, morality, and economics. The ideology illustrates the interpolation of individuals as subjects, the mutual recognition of each other, and finally the subject's recognition of himself, and the guarantee that everything really is so and the apparatus functions as long as the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly (181). The Ideological State Apparatuses represent the form in which the ideology of the ruling class must be realized. The ideologies originate from the social classes caught in the class struggle and the conditions of existence, their practices, and their experiences in the struggle (186).
Althusser contrasts ideology (knowledge thoroughly conditioned by politics) with science (direct objective knowledge). The opposition of these two terms causes a special emphasis on culture and literature, which is located between the poles of science and ideology. According to Althusser, the workings of ideology can be detected in art in ways that they cannot in society at large since art is independent from economic forces.