الفهرس 
The New Historicism and GreenblattOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The thesis adopts a twofold purpose: firstly, to examine the contributions of two major critical tendencies, namely New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, secondly, to examine the contributions of the critical enterprises of two considerable literary critics, namely the American New Historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt and the British Cultural Materialist critic Alan Sinfield, to the development of contemporary literary criticism. Moreover, the thesis attempts to provide a contrastive study between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in general, and Greenblatt and Sinfield in particular.
Generally speaking, the thesis adopts a historical orientation in order to trace the development of Cultural Studies towards the emergence of the New Historicist enterprise as well as tracing its evolution towards the rise of the Cultural Materialist project. Therefore, the thesis attempts to examine the historical background, the cultural formations, and the major influences that led to the emergence of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in general, and Stephen Greenblatt and Alan Sinfield’s critical enterprises in particular.
Particularly, the thesis adopts a two-fold methodology: descriptive and contrastive. On the one hand, the thesis aims to represent the underlying theoretical assumptions as well as practical premises of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism especially those of Greenblatt and Sinfield. On the other hand, it attempts to establish a contrast between New Historicism in general and Greenblatt and Sinfield in particular. Trying to do justice to the main topic of the thesis, the analysis focuses on and contrasts the New Historicist politics of conservatism, particularly Greenblatt’s entrapment model of subversion-containment as well as the Cultural Materialist politics of dissidence especially Sinfield’s strategy of faultlines.
Since the contrastive methodology constitutes the backbone of the thesis, the study inevitably works at three levels: the theoretical assumptions and the practical methodologies of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism;Greenblatt’s and Sinfield’s critical enterprises; and the politics of conservatism and the politics of dissidence. Moreover, the thesis represents the New Historicist conservative reading of literature in contrast to the Cultural Materialist dissident reading of it. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on Greenblatt’s monolithic concept of power in contrast to Sinfield’s multi-dimensional one.
Strictly speaking, the thesis aims to historicize the New Historicist enterprise and the Cultural Materialist project in general, and Stephen Greenblatt’s politics of conservatism as well as Alan Sinfield’s politics of dissidence in particular. In other words, the thesis considers the historical circumstances, including the economic, political, social, cultural, academic, and literary atmosphere, which surrounded the emergence of American New Historicism and British Cultural Materialism in literary criticism as well as the emergence of their major representatives Stephen Greenblatt in North American academy and Alan Sinfield in British academy. Historicizing the two critical tendencies is of pivotal importance in order to grasp not only the bases of the theoretical assumptions and the critical practices of the New Historicist enterprise and the Cultural Materialist project but also the bases of the intellectual ideologies of their most Conclusion and recommendations