'Moments of Negotiation offers the first book-length and indepth analysis of the New Historicist reading method, which the American Shakespeare-scolar Stephen Greenblatt introduced at the beginning of the 1980s. Ever since, Greenblatt has been hailed as the prime representative of this movement, whose critical acclaim has been one of the dominant trends in recent literary and cultural studies. In this new book, J� crgen Pieters attempts to fill a remarkable lacuna in the critical reception of Greenblatt's work. The book's aim is to provide a thorough analysis of the theoretical background of Greenblatt's method. This involves not only a close reading of Greenblatt's sources--the book offers introductory surveys of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Pierre Macherey, Michel de Certeau, Jean-Fran� 7ois Lyotard, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall--but also a critique of the way in which he adapts and transforms their original insights in the
