ABSTRACT
Each formal system or textual practice needs to have perspective on itself and can build self-reflexivity into itself. Without some abstraction, explanation or making sense is impossible, so that the current preference for particulars is one of emphasis. Historical critics are now reversing and reshaping the new critical repudiation of the so-called old historicism by contextualizing and historicizing the newer formalists, the deconstructionists. Nevertheless, a residue of new criticism and deconstruction remains in new historicism. Cultural materialism and new historicism have attracted such interest in Renaissance studies that it is possible to neglect other contributions. The German romantics and critics like Gerald Gould and William Empson have contributed to an understanding of the complexity and possible subversiveness of Shakespearean irony. Kierkegaard praises and continues Hegel's criticism of romantic irony but also criticizes Hegel's postion. He agrees with him that romantic irony, while asserting its objectivity, tends toward the subjective.
