Seventeenth Century Studies by William Kerrigan

     Seventeenth century studies as we know by now is a perspective of looking at the literary texts of the 17 th century with the application of structuralism postmodernism and new historicism. And so 17 th century studies is the redrawing of the boundary. But according to William Kerrigan it is not just structuralism, postmodernism and new historicism that plays the major roles in redrawing the boundaries. Besides these isms as asserted by Kerrigan, feminism also plays equally important role in redrawing the boundary.

     Structuralism was the first imported theory in America in the 1960s. It brought many confusion and clichés. It remained failure due to its emphasis on the “synchronic and the communal”; it’s preoccupation with binarism and its consequent weakness in dealing with historical process. Because of these weaknesses Jacques Derrida at John Hopkins University attacked the metaphysical dichotomies presented in the structure or structuralism in 1966. Again there was same confusion about deconstruction too as what it was and what it meant; clichés and jargons about new movement began to circulate but the intellectuals could not understand the new brand clearly. Like structuralism it proved to be a failure as being a historical; weakness in dealing with historical process and as it attacks on truth and logic in the name of rhetorics. After failing both structuralism and deconstruction in American academies a new brand of theory new historicism arrived in the early 1980s through the effort of Stephen Greenbelt and other Renaissance scholars. When new historicism came, it came as if it can fulfill what structuralism and deconstruction failed to fulfill. The new historicism blended the study of literature with the study of culture. The very name new historicism implies that it is a resistance to structuralism and post modernism. New historicism taught people how to come in touch with historical process. But it too was not free to ignore philosophical aspect of those earlier two movements. This created the same confusion and new clichés. Actually the new historicism is not really a methodology but a controversial description of western culture. This description of western culture was conducted by a new academic leftwing. Despite many ups and downs brought by new historicism, it too feels flat and remained a confusing thought. Many scholars have thought that new historicism would exclude the sign of structuralism and post structuralism but it continued to show similar attitude of these earlier unsuccessful theories. The new historicism could not grasp any revolutionary idea and it become flat and feeble. So different critical shift have been occurred in American literary theory industry, the change occurred in structuralism, post structuralism, deconstruction and new historicism, these changes are responsible to change the tradition of American literary criticism and that made the change in the face of seventeenth century studies too.

FEMINISM     The only sector of literary criticism achieved the admirable height in the seventeenth century studies is feminism. Feminists analyzed the 17 th century literary and revised those neglected feminist writing. Feminist scholars have rescued in annotated editors, the poems, diaries, domestic treaties and religions writings of Renaissance women rarely ignored by previous generation of scholars.The recent feminist scholars have found and mapped new genres and they have demonstrated the negative and biased attitudes of masculine authors towards the feminine authors,because women’s work were not supposed to be literary at all at that time.

Linda Woodbridge’s Women and the English Renaissance is an important collection of feminist contribution to old fashioned historical knowledge. She explains about the marginalization of women’s writing and male’s treatment for female.Kerrigan asserts that there is no single book produced by structuralism, post structuralism or new historicism that justified the revolutionary study of seventh century literature. In this reason also feminism achieved its rhetoric of self canonization. In this regard too, feminism is more revolutionary; it is at least searching the potential areas of inquiry.

JOHN DONNE STUDIES (STUDY OF FEMINISM ON METAPHYSICAL POETS)     Metaphysical poets were favored by new critics because their main concern of study was irony, conceit and metaphors. So John Donne became the major area of study for new criticism. In Arthur Marotti’s John Donne; Coterie Poet, describes Donne as a poet of very private nature, who writes poem only for limited and few people. He has taken as a poet of small, sophisticated people. So Marrotini refuses the tremendous imaginative capacity of Donne according to Kerrigan. Kerrigan further says Marrotti has neglected the imaginative invention of those arresting metaphors for the sake of social transaction. He has driven out the concept of Donne’s wit beauty and imagination. Another equally important text of seventeenth century studies about Donne is John Carey’s John: Life, Mind and Art where he criticized John Donne as a genderly biased poet, who inferiorized women by claiming that women are never pure. This book’s contemptuous (worthless) view of Donne has become so popular that it has become a minor contemporary genre in itself. Carely portays Donne as phallic narcissist, sexually frustrated, disingenuous creature who projects his frustration by victimizing women. His elegies and lyrics are the generalization about the pornographic attraction. Elegy lg, On His Mistress Going to Bed is presented as a minor contemporary genre about pornography. Treating the metaphysical poems of Donne as a pornographic representation Carey interprets Elegy lg as a vulgar act of despotic lover who is orderly his girl friend to strip and drawing her attention to his erected penis. But Kerrigan rejects such misinterpretation of metaphysical poems. He does not believe that the 17 th century poets wrote about pornography. According to Kerrigan the poem is about the foolishness of looking, frustration of seeing rather than the joys of touching and feeling. Kerrigan is unhappy with the way Carey has disastrously covered the work of Donne and other critics have covered. For example, Thomas Greene continues the trend set by John Carey and calls Donne Strongly phallocentric and cheerfully sexist.

MILTON STUDIES     The Milton focus of seventeenth century studies is re- reading Milton. In this respect we can say that seventh century studies are the study of Milton. It is natural to ask about Shakespearean studies; the great interest has been paid by new historicist towards Shakespeare. But Shakespeare has been studied much more in such a way that there is no any control up on Shakespearian issues. The Shakespeare’s study has been gone out of control. Every year Shakespeare has been open for making studies since eighteenth century, therefore Shakespeare remains fertile for almost all theories. Shakespeare studies have seemed gloriously out of control. It is undisciplined and unmanageable. In contrast the Milton’s Studies is more disciplined and unanimous than that of Shakespeare. However Milton seems to be engulfed in controversies while redrawing the boundary of his works. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the radical modern feminists in their works attack on Milton. They argue that Milton has always been a repressive figure to independent female intellectuals. The unholy trinities of Satan, Sin and Eve have been shown very unnecessarily by coping the holy trinity of God, Christ and Adam by Milton to illustrate that historical disposition and degradation of the female even on eighteenth and nineteenth century. Feminist literary scholars have taken Milton’s representation of Eve unsatisfactory. They find Milton’s view highly derogatory. Feminist scholars have attacked Milton from the side of gender. Milton is charged by them as he deliberately redesigns the mythologies of gender differences. Modern females’ intellectuals are discovering that Paradise Lost provides an opportunity to engage the contradictions of patriarchy more rigorously. There are liberal feminist who says Milton should not be looked from the recent context rather he should be looked from the context of his time that is puritan. Joseph Writtreich’s Feminist Milton suggests that Milton was progressive. He lived in the time of seventh century. He did not actively support the view of feminism. He did not have any conscious bad intention towards women. Hence feminist reading has changed the face of Milton from a pure puritan to a biased masculine puritan who ignored the originality of women. Along with the feminist scholars, new historicism and other political critics seem successful to represent the hidden facts about Milton. William Kerrigan successfully handles the opposing currents of Milton studies and redraws the boundary of one of the most influenced writers of seventeenth century. His ability to handle the contradiction ideas, conflicting views and opposing currents of seventeenth century critics and express them in well organized, comprehensible manners is the evidence of the fact that his redrawing the boundary in the first place is acceptable and secondly high satisfactory.