These two texts, Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory by Neema Parvini and Shakespeare and Ecofeminist Theory by Rebecca Laroche and Jennifer Munroe, are recent additions to the Arden Shakespeare and Theory series. They both explore the state of Shakespeare studies through theoretical analyses of the recent past and immediate present. Parvini takes us through the history of New Historicism and Laroche and Munroe examine the theoretical framework of ecofeminism as they pertain to Shakespeare, his work, and the theoretical criticism (as well as critical responses to these theories) of Shakespeare scholarship. In the editor’s preface—which is the same in both texts—Evelyn Gajowski states that the aim of the series is to “fill a yawning gap” and provide a “comprehensive scholarly analysis of [the] crucial development” of how Shakespeare scholars have affected the development of theory from about 1980 to the present, and both texts add significant contributions to this ongoing conversation.
Neema Parvini’s Shakespeare and New Historicist Theory consists of a table of contents, editor’s preface, acknowledgments, an introductory note, seven chapters, notes, a bibliography, and an index. Parvini’s intent, he tells us in the introductory note, is to “problematize, if not completely dismantle” the current state of New Historicism, which he defines as an “edifice” that has been “text-bookised” (x). He cites a failure on the part of scholars who, despite expressing a desire to avoid constricting categorizations, have fallen into what he considers an overly conventional narrative and asks us to view this narrative as a “crude shorthand” (x) that deserves more sustained attention. This book, he tells us, gives him the space to do just that, which makes it an appropriate resource for new scholars and more experienced critics alike.
The nuts and bolts of the book are useful, if somewhat bare in places. The bibliography is robust but the index is thin and mostly full of names rather than ideas or concepts. The notes are organized by chapter at the end of the volume and are informative and helpful. The writing is clear and engaging, and if the authorial voice at times breaks conventions of formality and professionalism—at one point he remarks upon an essay that was written “two years before I was born too!” (133)—such moments remind us that theory isn’t just fact or history or methods of analysis, but it is also people and passion and a form of representation that can become deeply personal.
Parvini’s chapters provide a logical progression of well-researched information and analysis that begin with basic definitions, move through examinations of the differences between “old” and “new” historicism, and examine the effect of New Historicism and its legacy on theoretical discourse. All these points of discussion are useful, informative, and serve to paint a more complete picture of how New Historicism has influenced and changed the way we think, talk, and write about Shakespeare. The text easily answered most of my questions regarding Parvini’s choices for these chapters. When I wondered why he had chosen Measure for Measure as his single Shakespearean textual focus, the first page of that chapter gave the answer: “because few plays have felt the impact of new historicist readings quite as readily” (75). When I questioned why he had chosen feminism as a point of comparison for New Historicism, he quickly explained the connection between them. When I wondered why he didn’t write about the future of New Historicism, the answer arose in the final chapter where he discusses the death of New Historicism and the rise of both post-theory historicists and the new materialism that Parvini argues take its place and continue its legacy.
Ultimately, the book becomes a eulogy for New Historicism, a story told at its open grave chronicling the highlights of a contentious but fascinating life. Parvini isn’t afraid to speak ill of the dead, but neither does he shy away from emphasizing the indelible and ultimately valuable impact New Historicism has had on Shakespearean discourse. New Historicism had a life well lived, he ultimately determines, but one that also did some very real damage to other literary approaches in Shakespeare studies. For example, his claim that “new historicism’s central concern with power … marginalizes other concerns, specifically feminist concerns” (105) speaks to the larger issues of power, representation, and marginalization with literary scholarship itself.
If Parvini’s text is a eulogy, Laroche and Munroe’s Shakespeare and Ecofeminist Theory can be read as an epithalamion, an examination and celebration of unions, collaborations, and alliances. In the preface, the authors give some insights into the process of the book, stating that “co-authoring this book was not simply an accident; it is the realization of what lies at our theoretical and practical core—that valuing collaboration and polyvocality best illustrates what we believe is one of the greatest contributions of ecofeminism” (xvii). They examine these connections and shared spaces on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level, arguing that “uniting the interests of ‘eco’ and ‘feminist’ scholarship will help us understand something that we cannot by investigating either of these approaches independent of one other” (xvi). The authors talk about ecocriticism and feminist and gender criticism as both overlapping and independent, linked and unfettered, collective and autonomous. How, the authors ask, can theory be a partnership while at the same time maintain its own unique identity? The answer, the rest of the book tells us, lies in intimacy and connectivity.
This book is structured like the others in the series, with an editor’s preface, acknowledgments, an authors’ preface, table of contents, an introduction, four chapters, conclusion, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. The text works hard to answer the immediate questions, laying out the purpose of the book in the introduction: to demonstrate that ecofeminism “offers a way to talk about … multiple forms of subjugation in ways that are unique” (5). The chapters have intriguing titles that capture the imagination (“Of Mouseholes and Housefires” and “Petrarch in the Produce Aisle”); however, a first glance makes one wonder if Shakespeare really is the focus of this text, as the only remotely Shakespearean chapter heading is a single quotation from Macbeth. The chapters themselves, however, make the connection between ecofeminist theory and Shakespeare abundantly clear. Analysis of the natural world (mice, worms, plants, etc.) and feminist issues (domesticity, gender, the blazon, body shaming) demonstrate the necessity of an ecofeminist approach in Shakespeare. They also successfully situate ecofeminism as a historically essential and traditionally ignored body of scholarship, arguing that scholars who write on race, class, and gender have failed to cite ecofeminist theory despite its decades-long examination of these concepts.
Laroche and Munroe redirect attention from “broad arcs of history” (134) that have dominated both ecocriticism and feminist theory to the familiar, the intimate, the homely, the domestic in order to subvert the fetishization of materialism and find narratives of resistance, and evidence of close relationships between human existence and the natural world. Ultimately, the authors’ text offers hope for a reconciliation between what they regard as unequal representations within these unities and alliances, giving ecofeminism equal status in theoretical scholarship and lifting it from its subjugated state.
