Volume 38, Number 6 · March 28, 1991
Perils of Historicism
By Anne Barton
Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture
by Stephen J. Greenblatt
Routledge, 188 pp., $25.00
'In a small glass case in the library of Christ Church, Oxford,' Stephen Greenblatt writes at the beginning of 'Resonance and Wonder,' the last and most recent of the nine essays in Learning to Curse, 'there is a round, red priest's hat.' A note card, he continues, 'identifies it as having belonged to Cardinal Wolsey,' and 'informs us [that] the hat was acquired for Christ Church in the eighteenth century, purchased, we are told, from a company of players.' This 'miniature history' accompanying the exhibit may (he allows) be 'too vague to be of much consequence,' but it teases Greenblatt's imagination: 'I do not know the name of the company of players,' he muses, 'or the circumstances in which they acquired their curious stage property, or whether it was ever used, for example, by an actor playing Wolsey in Shakespeare's Henry VIII, or when it was placed under glass.' Yet, as an emblem of contingency, of the mobility of cultural artifacts, including texts, in time, the Christ Church hat and its mysterious adventures fascinate him.
Review, 4783 words
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