Pathetically late without excuse!

I have to admit that arriving at the end of the introductory piece in which Greenblatt asserts his essentially Marxist premises and then being tantalized by the beginning of chapter two in which he actually employs the ideas of new-historical co-reading as discussed in Barry (172) was disappointing, that was the aspect I was interested in...but I digress.

Greenblatt spends the first chapter revealing the clear ties to Marxism that underly New-Historicism:

1. There can be no appeals to genius as the sole origin of the energies of great art.

2. There can be no motiveless creation....

6. There can be no art without social energy.... (12)

"The theater is manifestly the product of collective intentions" (4).

"The theater manifestly addresses its audience as a collectivity" (5).

"There is no escape from contingency" (3).

"They are signs of the inescapability of a historical process, a structured negotiation and exchange..."(6).

These as well as the emphasis on the transference and exchange of social energy as the purpose of artistic endeavor, and the emphasis on the practicality of nearly everyone involved in theatrical production, and the constant reference to the controlling influence of political factors on artistic creation, all reflect a distinctly Marxist tie.

It is left to us then to distinguish why it is we read this piece when it seems so clearly repetitive. And that must be that the emphasis on history qua history and not only on history as process. while the understanding of history (with the insistence on exchange, different forms of capital, and political control of artistic production) seems pointedly Marxist, it is not a general reading of economic factors reflected in the text, but a grounding of the text very specifically and independently in the history of its time in a dialectical manner. Greenblatt emphasizes that there is a co-creation between the history and the art. The Play creating the audience as the audience helps create the play.

Therefore, to my reading, I would conclude that the ties between history (class struggle) and art are (while not "vulgar" and strictly deterministic of the entire nature of any given piece) at least a lot closer than our previous Marxists (Hello, Eagleton) allowed for, and seems to stretch to encompass some of Biordieu's various forms of capital with perhaps a new one in this social energy...I'm not entirely sure what it is. I mean, art is the product, the effect of social energy, but while energia was defined I was never satisfied that I understood what was meant by social energy.

Ah well, given the speed with which it is written and the lack of time to read it over I am forced to assume the incoherence of this piece, but I'm now - perhaps even more than last week - out of time.