Zainab 1

Rida Zainab

English 510

Dr. Summer Pervez Sultan

19th April 2017

Critical Review: Culture by Stephen Greenblatt

In this article, Stephan Greenblatt has attempted to define culture and its role in

literature. As we are studying transcultural studies, this article helps a lot in developing

connections between cultural mobility and literature. At first, Greenblatt has tried to explain

what culture actually is by quoting Edward B. Tyler along with the fact that this term is rather

a new one. He is questioning the utility and usefulness of this concept for literature students.

Greenblatt then challenges the very definition by saying that culture is a term that is

repeatedly used without meaning much of anything at all, a vague gesture toward a dimly

perceived ethos (Greenblatt 225). As students of literature we are well aware of the dilemma

that all the concepts that try to define culture are rather complex or vague and leave us in a

dead end. Greenblatt is trying to find a way to make these vague concepts more useful.

Being a New Historicist, Greenblatt says that we need to see it in a different light the

concept gestures towards what appear to be opposite things: constraints and mobility.

(Greenblatt 225). He starts with constraint first. Basically, he is discussing the state

apparatuses in a different light. How conformity is imposed on people plays an important role

in imposing a culture: cultural boundaries. These models and limits are enforced on people by

certain means like negative reinforcements (extreme punishments like exile, execution etc.

and less severe punishments like pity, contempt or silence) and positive reinforcement

(rewards for good behaviour like public honours, nods of approval etc.). These procedures
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confine the individuals in predefined cultural boundaries. This leaves us to question the very

concept: what sort of cultural boundaries we want to transcend? To what extent we achieve

this goal?

Afterwards, Greenblatt explains how constraint relates to literature. He illustrates that

literature has been a powerful source in constraining people in cultural boundaries. He has

given example of Western Literature. One can understand culture by analysing the sort of

boundaries that existed before. So, taking culture as a complex whole can help in

understanding it better. We can begin to do simply by a heightened attention to the beliefs

and practices implicitly enforced by particular literary acts of praising or blaming.

(Greenblatt 226).

He has given a set of six questions to trace cultural DNA behind a work. Cultural

analysis demands to push beyond boundaries and to make links between texts, values and

practices in culture. But he heeds a warning to keep these links separate from close reading

because textual implications are important too as they absorbed the social values. But there

are certain texts that lose their meaning when removed from their social surroundings in

which they were produced. But the question remains: what about multicultural or

transcultural texts? How can one situate such texts?

Eventually, he explains: It is necessary to use whatever is available to construct a

vision of the complex whole to which Tyler referred. (Greenblatt 227). A particular culture

helps in understanding a text and vice versa. But cultural understanding is not dependant on

literary studies. Both are parts of a complex whole and one need to understand it.

Then, he gives examples of constraint in literature. He discussed Popes Epistle to

Doctor Arbuthnot and Marvells Horatian Ode. Both of them embody the internalization

and practice of a code of manners (Greenblatt 227). Then he gives example

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Shakespeares As You Like It to show constraint in literature. Orlando was not mad about not

receiving inheritance but rather he was mad for being restrained to learn manners of his class.

On the other hand, Audrey, who is simple country wench (Greenblatt 228) learned manners

from clown. Even a minor character is bound to cultural restraints of manners. These

characters not only negotiate but also maintain the cultural boundaries. So, a writer is

involved in reaffirming the boundaries by writing about them, even though characters try to

go beyond them. Greenblatt then moves on and uses Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queen as

an embodiment for relationship between constraint and mobility. The constraints present in it

are countered by the presence of an imaginary landscape that refers to mobility. No matter

how much freedom people demand they are in chains of boundaries at some level or another.

Furthermore, art is also a medium between mobility and restraint. Restraint and

mobility go hand in hand in every culture even though their ratio can be different. Mobility is

inevitable that is why too much limits are imposed on people. In case of writers, he explained

that many great writers like Shakespeare, Spencer and Dicken borrowed from different

writings and cultures rather than harping just about clichs of their own cultures. This refers

to cultural mobility. This mobility is not the expression of random motion but exchange.

(Greenblatt 229). The exchange can be of any sort: of ideas, institution and materials. This

mobility changes the nature of boundaries and restraints.

To conclude, Greenblatt stresses that students must understand the relation between

history and literature and they should stop separating them, keeping idea of complex whole in

mind. Mobility helps to go beyond cultural boundaries. In The Tempest, Shakespeare did it.

If it is the task of cultural criticism to decipher the power of Prospero, it is equally its task to

hear the accents of Caliban (Greenblatt 232). Its the power of writers imaginative mobility

that we can see both the slave (the oppressed) and the prince together transcending cultural

boundaries, leading us to the heart of transcultural studies and transculturation.

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Work cited:

Greenblatt, Stephan. Culture. from Critical Terms for Literary Study (2nd Ed.). University

of Chicago Press, 1995.