Beyond Materiality in Shakespeare Studies

Abstract

“Materialism,” “materiality,” and “material culture” have become key terms in early modern studies and Shakespeare scholarship over the past two decades. Responding to perceived subjective shortcomings of the New Historicism and Cultural Materialism of the 1980s and early 90s, “new materialist” approaches have emerged in scholarship ranging from Book History and textual studies to affect theory and ecocriticism. This article reviews the debates over this materialist emphasis and points to new directions that Shakespeare studies might take, not in a return to idealism, but beyond the dichotomy between subject and object, mind and body, material and immaterial.