Stephen Greenblatt

Why, hello there. My name is Stephen Greenblatt.

(Okay, it's just Alex, but for the sake of theatrics, let's assume I really am Greenblatt. I apologize in advance should my impersonation mirror or borrow much of its content from this post.)

I teach courses at Harvard University (perhaps you've heard of it), one particular course of note being a lecture-based class for an undergraduate program called History and Literature. The topic was on human sexuality, or more specifically, masturbation. Of course, within the academic community, especially one typically perceived as being as buttoned-down as Harvard, word traveled fast that the “modern master of masturbation” would be teaching a course at Harvard, utilizing the book Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, by my former colleague Thomas Laqueur. One can only imagine the daunting task, especially as a college professor, to teach something that the very surgeon general was fired for attempting to promote. She spoke out about the health benefits of masturbation, but her views, ironically, conflicted with our current president at the time, a Mr. Clinton of no small ill repute when it comes to sex.
In 2004 I wrote a beautiful book called Will in the World which focused on Shakespeare and how his life in the Elizabethan England influenced his writing. The book in its entirety can be found here.

If you're wondering what sort of school of literary criticism I happen to subscribe to, it would New Historicism. Sounds enthralling, I know. Basically, I sort of invented the concept and have worked on it to this day in perfecting it. To sum it up, I would say that it's all about examining a work of literature in the context of the world in which it was written, paying heed to the place and time in which the author wrote it, employing cultural literacy to understand the society from which the text has risen. By examining the social politics, historical context, and general circumstance of the time.

I believe profoundly that to truly understand the work of any author, one must essentially become that author, engaging the writer's mind with the intention of discovering not merely what someone wrote, or even how, but rather to examine the why. For instance, one can't simply examine The Taming of the Shrew by itself without first coming to understand what the general view of women and love or marriage was during Shakespeare's age. If I must compare myself to Northop Frye, I would say I utilize his archetypal (mythical) theory of symbols, looking how a piece of work related to literature outside itself, or to be more specific, how it relates to the day and age of the world when it was written.

I have written many books, or edited them, performed with the comic troupe that would become Monty Python's Flying Circus, and I even knocked over T. S. Eliot.

If you wish to see me in the flesh, here I am, being interviewed about the play I co-wrote with Charles L. Mee.