"I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller"
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Greenblatt is tipping his hand: he doesnt just want to interpret a storyteller, he wants to borrow the storytellers instrument panel. Coming from the critic who helped popularize New Historicism, the line reads like a manifesto for criticism that knows it is never neutral. If narrative is power, then analysis that pretends to be purely diagnostic is either naive or disingenuous. Greenblatt opts for candor: he intends to exploit.
The first move is strategic humility that doubles as control. By admitting desire - "I wanted" - he frames the project as motivated, even hungry, rather than objective. That personal stake gives him license to stage his criticism as drama. The second move is meta: "a book about a great storyteller" sets up the expected biography-or-study, but the twist is that the subject cannot be accessed without narrative scaffolding. "There have to be stories about the storyteller" suggests that the figure at the center (Shakespeare is the usual suspect in Greenblatt's orbit) is less an archive than a silhouette; the gaps demand invention, selection, framing. Thats not a confession of fabrication so much as an argument that all biography is already an authored plot.
Subtext: the critic is also competing. To write about a supreme raconteur is to risk sounding like footnotes. Greenblatt answers by making criticism performative - not just commentary on narrative power, but a demonstration of it. In a culture where scholarship survives by reaching beyond the seminar room, he positions storytelling as method, not garnish: the way to make ideas travel, persuade, and stick.
The first move is strategic humility that doubles as control. By admitting desire - "I wanted" - he frames the project as motivated, even hungry, rather than objective. That personal stake gives him license to stage his criticism as drama. The second move is meta: "a book about a great storyteller" sets up the expected biography-or-study, but the twist is that the subject cannot be accessed without narrative scaffolding. "There have to be stories about the storyteller" suggests that the figure at the center (Shakespeare is the usual suspect in Greenblatt's orbit) is less an archive than a silhouette; the gaps demand invention, selection, framing. Thats not a confession of fabrication so much as an argument that all biography is already an authored plot.
Subtext: the critic is also competing. To write about a supreme raconteur is to risk sounding like footnotes. Greenblatt answers by making criticism performative - not just commentary on narrative power, but a demonstration of it. In a culture where scholarship survives by reaching beyond the seminar room, he positions storytelling as method, not garnish: the way to make ideas travel, persuade, and stick.
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| Topic | Writing |
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