ABSTRACT
Theorists tell us that we now write in a post-theoretical moment. The publication of David Kastan’s Shakespeare After Theory in 1999 both announced and exemplified a shift in critical paradigms of consequence for Shakespeare studies, for early modern studies, and for Sidney scholarship as well. By the turn of the millennium, new historicism had already given way to the new materialism, especially with the rise of what Kastan calls-with tongue in cheek-“the new boredom.” With his sprezzatura showing, Kastan’s “boredom” points to current preoccupation with the history of the book, its means of production, and its modes of reception (manuscript to marginalia) as a vehicle for clarifying how and why Renaissance readers read and wrote. As the new historicism came to seem less new and less historical, its presentist political agenda lost much of its currency, and the call for literary histories freed from ideological agendas resonated more widely in the field. new historicism has been replaced by increasingly rigorous histories, and nowhere has the resulting alteration in critical paradigms been more consequential than in what Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti have called the turn toward religion in early modern studies. new scholarship has secured attention to english Catholics, just as newly reformed Reformation criticism has expanded horizons of critical awareness about the heterogeneity of beliefs and practices among varieties of Reformed communities in england and on the Continent (Marshall; Benedict). As the single universal discourse of early modern english culture-the lens through which all aspects of public and private life were filtered-religion has again drawn substantial critical attention from literary scholars. Being post-theoretical affords no room for being post-critical.
