pure texts, applied texts, literary historicisms, cultural histories

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The Analysis of Culture Revisited: Pure Texts, Applied Texts, Literary Historicisms, CulturalHistoriesAuthor(s): Warren BoutcherSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 489-510Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654237

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T h e Analysis o C u l t u r e Revis ited

u r e T e x t s p p l i e d T e x t s L i t e r a r y

Historicisms u l t u r a l Histories

WarrenBoutcher

Theory

Whatis the relationshipbetween studyof canonicaltexts and broaderso-

cial and culturalhistory?Thisquestion ies behindthecontemporary cademic

issue of historicism and the public culturewars thatbroke out in the late

1980s,butitwas askedby RaymondWilliams n the late 1950s andby German

and French ntellectualsof the 1930s. Forthepurposesof thepresentargument

I shall distinguishbetween threebroadphases in the responsesof those whohave taken the inquiry up most actively. Each phase began with what were

perceivedas crises orturning-pointsn thehumanitiescorrespondingo water-

shedsin widerhistory.The first andmostprofoundbeganafter heglobal crisis

of 1929-33 and continuedthroughthe global wars that followed. A second

beganin the mid-1950s afterMcCarthyism, heconsolidationof the ColdWar

and the Soviet invasion of Hungary.A thirdphase began in the mid-1970s,afterthe events of 1968 broughton the extendedperiodof social unrestwhich

foundone important picenter n the universitiesthemselves and which broke

out againin the morecivilized form of the culturewarsalreadymentioned.Most discussions of historicismdo not engagedirectlywith thepracticeof

history.The second half of the paperwill thereforeask what the theoretical

accountoffered in the first half means for historicalresearchthat startsfrom

past texts, and will include as one of its practicalexamplesa case-studyin the

modem intellectualhistoryofferedin outlinebelow.

This article s developedfromapaperdeliveredat theCambridgeHistoricalSocietyCollo-

quiumon TheUses of CulturalHistory, 13 May 2000, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

am gratefulto Prof. PeterBurke,Dr. Helen Castor,andQuentinSkinner.

489

Copyright003byJournalf theHistory f Ideas, nc.



490 WarrenBoutcher

LiteraryHistories of Ideas

Afterthe FirstWorldWaran intellectualrevolt tookplace againstthe iso-

lation of aestheticexperiencein the European radition. twas led in England

and Americaby teacherswhowantedto establish hatthegeneralcritical ntel-ligence acquired n English literarystudies could be appliedin extra-literaryfields fromanthropology o social psychology. In England,English literature

as a single disciplinewas to be the liaisonfield of study ; n America t fell to

pre-professional iteraryeducation n general.'The commonprojectwas to use

refinedliteraryexperienceof texts as the base from which to conductvalue-

laden,historically nformedanalysisof thecontemporary roblemsof interwar

Europeanand Americansociety, of westernculture andcivilization.2As con-

solidatedin English intellectual culture between the pre-warand immediate

post-warperiodthis has been dubbedthe momentof Scrutiny, he influential

literaryperiodicalheadedby F. R. Leavis. InAmericanintellectual cultureit

mightwell be dubbedthe momentof PartisanReview,an equally influential

periodicalwhose leadingliterarycritic was Lionel Trilling.3Leavis's at once dissidentandelitist literarycriticism concealed a sociol-

ogy designedto salvagethehumanecultureof anearlierEngland rom amidst

thedecayof masscivilization.4TrillingusedEuropean ulture o critiquewhat

he perceivedto be the superficialityof modernAmericancivilization andlit-

erature.His criticismbecame the Ellis Islandof intellectual ife, theproductof

an immigrantculture desirousof assimilationby means of high cultureto anAmericansociety whose better values were formedby the Europeancanon.5Forboth, then, distinctive histories of society and social change, cultureand

culturalchange were central to the enterpriseof criticism.6Culturein their

handswas a value-ladenEnglishor Europeanway of life thatshapedandwas

shapedby the highestartisticconsciousness.As such, it carrieda new aware-

ness of alienationandrepression n the midstof modernsociety orcivilization.

The aesthetic critical sense of a Leavis or a Trillingwas now a sense of pastandpresentculturalandsocial life. Itcompeted successfullywith claimsto the

1F. R. Leavis, 'Scrutiny':A Retrospect, Scrutiny,20 (1963), 1-24 (9, 11).2 RaymondWilliams,CultureandSociety1780-1950 (Harmondsworth, 9632), 239; Peter

Watson,A TerribleBeauty:A Historyof the People and Ideas thatShapedthe ModernMind

(London,2000),450-53;AdamKuper,Culture:TheAnthropologistsAccountCambridge, 999),23-46.

3 FrancisMulhem, TheMomentof Scrutiny London, 19812);HughWilford,TheNew

York ntellectuals:From Vanguardo Institution Manchester,1995).

4WolfLepenies, BetweenLiterature ndScience: TheRiseofSociology,tr.R. J.Hollingdale

(Cambridge,1988), 175-88.

5MariannaTorgovnick, The Politics of the 'We', South AtlanticQuarterly,91 (1992),

43-63, esp. 50.6 See Mulhern,Moment, 57-78; and see Lionel Trilling, SincerityandAuthenticity Lon-

don, 19742).



TheAnalysis of CultureRevisited 491

same groundmade by what were seen as crudersociological theories of his-

tory, especially those of Marxistor progressive-liberal nspiration.This was

theonly formof culturalcriticismwidely on offerin literary tudiesin EnglandandAmerica beforethe late 1950s.7

WithinEuropean riticalphilosophya contemporaneous evolt tookplaceagainstthe isolationof speculative deas from the historyof experientiallyand

sociallysituatedhuman hought.Buildingonearlierdevelopments, adical ritics

of European dealism in the interwarperiod plantedone or otherversion of

hermeneuticor materialisthistoricism-Geisteswissenschaften, psychoanaly-

sis, criticaltheory,the sociology of knowledge, HeideggerianDestruktionof

the history of western ontology-at the center of speculative thought.8The

common goal was a historicistcritiqueof decliningwestern,especially Ger-

man, civilization and an agendafor its reconstructionor deconstruction.The

defeat anddestructionof Germany n thewardampened heconditionsfor this

critique.The immediatepost-warperiodsaw some aspectsrecuperatednParis

andsome assimilated n America via the intellectualemigration.9American ntellectualhistory, n themeantime,was moving intheopposite

direction, owardsmethodological dealismandaway from a social historyof

ideas.AmericanNew History'sown conjunctionof intellectualandsocial his-

tory peakedin the 1920s and early 1930s.10 t then came under attack for its

materialismand relativism as the crisis in Europedeepenedduringthe 1930s

and as thepoliticallymoreaggressiveintellectualson theconservativewing of

the American ntelligentsiabegantopressfor anew role inthe conservationofwesternvalues now under hreatattheirpointof origin (Europe).PerryMiller's

and ArthurLovejoy's work lived with the pressurefor an objectivist instru-

mentalismin Americanhistoriographyhatgrew duringwartime andthroughthe early Cold War, houghwithoutfalling into easy compliance. However,Miller and Lovejoy were increasinglyto promote disembodied ideas as the

basic facts of humanhistory,grounding heirwork on mind in text criticism.

Lovejoy's historyof ideas in particular acked the criticaltools to tackle our

opening questionin terms otherthan those of pureideas and theirrecurrence

throughhistory.1Emigre eo Spitzerdemonstratedhe limitsof Lovejoy'stext-

7 RichardOhmann, Englishand theCold War n TheColdWar&the University:Towards

an IntellectualHistoryof the Postwar Years New York,1997), 73-106.

8 See PaulHamilton,Historicism(London, 1996),esp. chs. 3 and4.

9JamesD. Wilkinson,The ntellectualResistance inEurope(Cambridge,Mass., 1981),ch.

I.

10RobertDarnton, Intellectualand CulturalHistory, The Kiss of Lamourette London,

1990), esp. 191-93.

Nicholas Guyatt, 'An instrumentof nationalpolicy': PerryMiller andthe ColdWar,

forthcomingn theJournalofAmericanStudies;RobertoFesta, Tempoe ragione: l SettecentodiArthurO.Lovejoy, La reinvenzione ei lumi:Percorsi toriograficidelnovecento, d.Giuseppe

Ricuperati Florence,2000), esp. 81-82.



492 WarrenBoutcher

based historicalexplanationof theideas thatshapedHitlerism n thisjournal n

1944.12

Social Histories of Ideas

In a secondphase,betweenthemid-1950s andthe early 1970s, there were

attemptson all sides in the Anglo-Americancontextto breakwith whatwere

now perceived as outmoded or old historicismsin the humanities and social

sciences.13Particularly mportantorour theme was thegrowingbelief thatthe

political and intellectualcutting-edgebetween study of past documents and

contemporary nalysisof cultureandsociety no longer lay with conventional

high literaryanalysisof texts andideas.'4 The perceptionof crisis, of the end

of an era in the humansciences, was widely used in Britainand Americaas

justificationfor claims thata new phaseof neutral mpiricismor objectiv-ist scientism in the analysis of history, language, society, and politics had

begun.This was sometimes combinedonboth sides of theAtlanticwith apres-sureof expectation hat the new knowledgeto be producedby the humanities

andsocial sciences shouldbe instrumentalnsecuring he northatlanticway of

life perceivedto have emergedwith some finalityin the 1950s (Guyatt's ob-

jectivist instrumentalism ). hiswas to be the end of the eraof dominanceof

the old ideologicalhistoricisms,expressed n a catchphrase s the end of ide-

ology. 5

These claims were inturn nterpreted s new forms of ideologicalobfusca-tion by critics across a range of left-liberal and New Left political opinion.PeterLaslettattemptedo revive thetheoreticaland historicalstudyof politicalideas in the face of the forms of positivism he perceivedto be consolidatingthemselves in Britishintellectualculture.16 . P.Thompsonattackeda whole

intellectualgeneration's inertsurrendero the establishedfacts of Natopolisand AlasdairMacIntyrecritiquedconformismin the human sciences in the

1960 volume OutofApathy.17 The presentargument,however,which is con-

12 Geistesgeschichte s. Historyof Ideas asAppliedto Hitlerism, HI, 5 (1944), 191-203,

repr. n Leo Spitzer,RepresentativeEssays, eds. AlbanK. Forcione,HerbertLindenberger, nd

Madeline SutherlandStanford, 1988),207-21.

13See Donald R. Kelley, The Old CulturalHistory, History of the HumanSciences, 9

(1996), 101-26.

14 C. P. Snow, The TwoCultures,ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge, 1993);ErnestGellner,TheCrisisin the Humanitiesand the Mainstream f Philosophy, Crisisin theHumanities,ed.

J. H. Plumb (Harmondsworth,1964), 45-81, esp. 71-81; GrahamHough, Crisis in LiteraryEducation, dem,96-109.

15Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustionof Political Ideas in the Fifties

(1960; Cambridge,Mass., 19884);TheEnd of Ideology Debate, ed. ChaimI. Waxman New

York,1968).16Philosophy,Politics andSociety,ed. PeterLaslett(Oxford, 1956).

17E. P.Thompsonet al., OutofApathy, New Left Books (London,1960),20.




tinuous with this left-liberalposition, should not be takenas implyingthatbydefinition historicalwork on texts proceedingunder the ethos of the end of

ideology couldnotproveproductive n relationto ouropening question.The

criticallyrevisionist,scholarly,andanti-ideologicalstudyof thehistoryof phi-

losophy introducedby Paul OskarKristellerand consolidatedby his leadingstudent,CharlesSchmitt,proved highly productiveandincorporated tudyof

social and institutional actorsaffectingthe textual traditionof philosophicalideas (it is the subjectof one of the practicalexamplesof researchofferedin

the secondhalf of thispaper). 8 t theotherendof the spectrum heperceivedcrisis in the humanitiesprovidedthe atmosphere or a returnof grandtheory,

especially in FranceandGermany.This, likewise, was to prove very produc-tive for text studies,and took the form of a rangeof new and counter-histori-

cisms drawingon, modifying, deconstructinghehistoricismsof the inter-war

period nvokedabove:TheodoreAdorno'scritical heory,Hans-GeorgGadamerand JiirgenHabermason philosophical hermeneutics,Louis Althusser and

Michel Foucault on the historyof ideology andpower/knowledge,Lacan on

Freudianpsychoanalysis,JacquesDerridaon thehistoryof westernthought.19Inthemeantime,however,the most importantdevelopments rom theper-

spectiveof thepresentarticle followed on fromthe emergenceof the new his-

toriansand social scientists.20These historiansfundamentallycontested and

changedthe idealized histories of past cultureandsociety that had been built

up impressionistically romliterarysources.In their own termsthey were go-

ing againstthegrainof vulgarMarxistand other inear-teleologicalgrandnar-rativesthatimposed single directionson historyand that were potentiallyre-

ducible to ideological interests n the present.A vastly enlargedfield of social

andculturalconcernswas now fed by harder ocial andlogical sciences such

as ethnography,demography,and even analyticphilosophyand was more in

tune with the democratic,left-liberalpolitics of the expandinguniversities.

This new historical and cross-disciplinary rend,as diversely manifestedin

local intellectualconditions,will account for some of what provedto be the

most influentialfields and schools of historical and culturalstudy in this pe-

riod:the new socialhistory nBritainand thecrucialnew interests t opened up

8PhilosophyandHumanism:RenaissanceEssays in Honorof Paul OskarKristeller,ed.

EdwardP.Mahoney (New York,1976);New Perspectiveson RenaissanceThought:Essays in

theHistoryof Science,Education andPhilosophyin Memoryof CharlesB. Schmitt,eds. John

HenryandSarahHutton(London,1990).

19TheodorW.Adomo,CriticalModels:Interventions ndCatchwords,r.HenryW.Pickford

(New York,1998);JacquesLacan,Ecrits:A Selection,tr.Alan Sheridan London,1977), from

the French extpublished n 1966,two yearsafter he foundationof l'Ecole Freudiennede Paris;andsee TheReturnof GrandTheory n the HumanSciences, ed. QuentinSkinner Cambridge,

1985).20JimObelkevich, NewDevelopments nHistory n the 1950sand 1960s, Contemporary

BritishHistory, 14 (2000), 125-42.



494 WarrenBoutcher

in areas such as the historyof the family,household,and gender;21new con-

tacts betweenthe studyof historyand the new social and culturalanthropolo-

gies in Britain,France,andAmerica;22he arrivalof the second andthen the

thirdgeneration fAnnaleshistorians, o which we mightattachnotonlyFrench

historians romEmmanuelLeRoy Ladurie o ChristianeKlapischbut theearlywork of CarloGinzburg,PeterBurke,andwhat became the Princeton chool of

social historians,with its socio-economic and culturalstrandsof historiogra-

phy (LawrenceStone,Natalie ZemonDavis, and RobertDamton).

Many of these new historiansandanthropologists,however,had received

a relatively traditional rainingin text criticism and the history of ideas and

took some of the resultingskills andconcernswith them.Even some of those

who did not incidentallydiscovered new possibilities and problems for the

interpretation f literaryevidence in the new historicaland social-scientific

contexts.It becameincreasinglyclearthat,as PeterLaslettremarked, conven-tional historicalor literary nference [fromthe evidence of past texts] is not

enough when one is seekingto understand he conventions andassumptionsof past societies and cultures.He made this remark n the course of an argu-ment which juxtaposedthe assumption,based on Shakespeare'sRomeo and

Juliet,thatmarriageatJuliet'sage was normal n theearlymodemperiod,with

separatedata based on parishrecords,which suggestedotherwise.23Laslett's

eventualconclusionwas that iteraryrepresentations f social and culturalcon-

ventions were distortedandthereforeuseless as historicaldata.24

In 1950 CliffordGeertz stumbled out of anundergraduatemajorin En-

glish andphilosophyandlooking for somethingrathermoreconnectedto the

worldas it was, wandered ntoanthropology.Whathe tookwith him from his

liberalartspast was a concernwith theroleof thought n history, and what

he neededwas a practicable rogramof empiricalresearch. 25AmongNatalie

Zemon Davis's experiencesat SmithCollege in the 1940s was a feeling that

herteacherswere not addressingquestionsthatinterestedherabouthow the

social worldrelated o theintellectualworld. Therepressiveanti-Communist

politics of the early 1950s providedthe conditionsin which she beganto use

printedbooks in sophisticatedways as data for a social history of religious

21 AdrianWilson, A CriticalPortraitof Social History, RethinkingSocial History:En-

glish Society 1570-1920 and itsInterpretation, d. AdrianWilson(Manchester,1993),9-58.22 FromKeithThomas, HistoryandAnthropology, Past andPresent,24 (1963), 3-24, to

Gayle Rubin, TheTrafficin Women: Notes on a 'Political Economy' of Sex, Towardsan

Anthropologyof Women, d. RaynaReiter(New York,1975), 157-2 1023PeterLaslett,The WorldWeHaveLost (London, 1965),87.24 PeterLaslett, TheWrongWaythrough he Telescope:A Note on LiteraryEvidencein

Sociology andin HistoricalSociology, TheBritishJournalof Sociology,27 (1976), 319-42.

25 CliffordGeertz,AftertheFact: TwoCountries,FourDecades, OneAnthropologistCam-bridge, 1995), 98, 115. See also JackGoody (TheExpansiveMoment:Anthropologyn Britain

andAfrica, 1918-1970 [Cambridge,1995], 118-43).




experienceandmoral sentiment n the Reformation.Deprivedof herpassportbecause her husbandChandlerDavis continued o refuse to takeanti-Commu-

nist oaths, she could not visit Frencharchives andwas forcedto work on rare

books in New York.26

TextualStudiesand CulturalStudies

The firsthalf of the thirdphase-to the late 1980s-saw the institutional-

ization of the newly recovered French and Germanhistoricisms and counter-

historicisms such as Anglo-American literarytheory and a range of radical

new approaches o texts andtextuality.These approacheswere conservative,

however,preciselyinsofaras they tightened hat dentificationbetween textual

analysisof discourseandtotal historicalexplanationsof thought,culture,and

society madeby pioneerssuch as Leavis andTrilling.27 xplaining he textbymeans of the applicationof one or another heoreticalconcept, explaining,for

example,the structure f ideology orsubjectivityrevealedby atext,would still

deliver in a privileged way the fundamental deas that have generallydeter-

mined society, culture,and the consciousness of individuals.28High literary

analysisreclaimed he ground t had held untilthe late 1950s. The left politicsof thisreclaim,however,precipitatedheattempted conservative estoration

of culturalvalues andthe culturewars thatbroke out with Allan Bloom's de-

nunciation of the decline in Americanliteraryeducation(The Closing of the

AmericanMind, 1987).29

Thesecondhalf of thethirdphasehas seen the rise to prominenceof intel-

lectual and culturalhistory within the historicalprofession in America and

Europe.If one scanseverybook onhistory n stockin aNew Yorkstore suchas

Labyrinth, nequicklygrasps hecurrent ituationof historicalstudy.The most

powerfully funded and internationally most importanthistorical industry

(America's)has convergedon the idea of culture,on the study of the ideas

shapingandshapedby culture.The bookshelvesconfirmthe thesis of a recent

book concerning he powerof culture nAmerica: he Americancentury, he

twentiethcentury,for example, is now studied-at least historically speak-

ing-more throughtsculture han hroughtspolitics,economy,orsocial struc-

26 JudyCoffinandRobertHarding, NatalieZemonDavis n VisionsofHistory,eds.HenryAbelove, Betsy Blackmar,PeterDimock, andJonathanSchneer(Manchester,1983), esp. 102,

104-7;Natalie ZemonDavis, Holbein'sPicturesofDeath andtheReformation tLyons, Stud-

ies in the Renaissance, 3 (1956), 97-130; Peletier and Beza PartCompany, Studies in the

Renaissance, 11(1964), 188-222.27

Hamilton,Historicism,131.

28 See T.Eagleton,CriticismandIdeology(London,1976);Literature,Politics and Theory:

Papers romtheEssexConference1976-84,eds. FrancisBarker,PeterHulme,Margaretversen,andDianaLoxley (New York,1986).

29 PeterWatson,A TerribleBeauty,721-36;Ohmann, Englishandthe ColdWar, 6-104.



496 WarrenBoutcher

ture.30nsofaras this relatesto historiciststudy of past texts, the agendahas

been set by the Americannew historicism of StephenGreenblatt,which has

providedthe point of crossover between grandtheoriesof textualityanddis-

course and the new culturalhistory.

Applied Texts

The presentarticlewould proposean optimisticview of the optionsmade

available o studentsof artandsociety or textandculture not ustbyAmeri-

can new historicismbut by the cumulativeenterpriseof all three phases of

twentieth-centuryntellectualhistorysketchedabove. Ingeneralterms,the in-

ternationalization f post-colonialstudies since the late 1980s,the new empha-sis on hybridization,migration,and mobility both in the conduct andin the

contentof the humansciences,has creatednew andcomplexmodelsof cultureand freedup disciplinaryboundariesonce more.31The pointof view assumed

here, however, is primarilya methodologicalone thatsees particular alue in

the studyof a new kind of data.Forthe ongoing theoreticalconstructionsand

deconstructionsof new historicisms should surely acknowledgethe ongoingconstitutionof new kinds of empiricaldata(and vice-versa).32 shall refer to

these data as applied exts and claim thatthey are valuableinsofar as theyreveal intellectual and culturalhistory as a social process. The data results

from bifocalknowledgeof thehistoryanddetail of anartefactand of theactivi-

ties, practices,conventions,andoccasions of a society;the outcomeis a simul-

taneouslysharpenedperceptionboth of aspectsof the artefactand of the dis-

tinctiveexperiencesandinstitutionsof a society.33The goal, in otherwords, is

a formof interdisciplinary ulturalanalysis.The post-warperiodhas seen a cumulativediscoveryof appliedbases on

which to relate cultural artefactsand slices of history.The result is that the

researchercan choose not to startfrom a de-socialized artefact( pure ext ),which is reified as art n some hypotheticalspace separate rom a reified soci-

ety andplaced outside the process of history.This happenspriorto its being

put back in a static and pre-preparedhistoricalcontext, aligned with a pre-determinedhistorical rendorcrackedopenby theapplicationof a theory.The

researcher an,rather, hoose to discover the artefact n anactive orinteractive

setting,as an appliedtext of verifiablehistoricity.

30 ThePowerof Culture:CriticalEssays inAmericanHistory,eds. RichardWightmanFox

and T. J.JacksonLears(Chicago, 1993).31 See After Colonialism:ImperialHistories and Postcolonial Displacements,ed. Gyan

Prakash Princeton,1995).

32 E. P.Thompson,ThePovertyof Theory:Oran Orreryof Errors(London,1995).33 MichaelBaxandall,PaintingandExperience nFifteenth Century taly:A Primerin the

Social History of Pictorial Style(Oxford,1972), 151-53.




The basicparadigms orthe differencebetweena pureandanappliedtext

emergefromthe studyof thehistoryof thebook,though analogousparadigms

emergein thehistoryof otherarts(especially painting)and sciences. Thepuretext is notconfrontedas a particularmaterialbookthatalreadyhas a social life,

thatis produced,bought,exchanged,and readin particular onditions.It is thetext read andexperiencedas words andideasnow in criticalhyperspace orthe

play spectated n thevirtual heatre).Thehistoryof the book starts romcopiesof editions of textsowned and markedby owners,butthecontrastinglyappliedtext is not the copy of the edition or the material,markedbook itself. The

format n which a text is publishedas anedition is indeedconcrete evidenceof

producers'choices and the annotatedbook is indeed concrete evidence of an

interactionbetween text andreader;butneithercantell you much unless com-

binedwith otherkinds of circumstantial vidence.An appliedtext is rather he

historicallyandculturallyconditionedpatternof habitualperceptionandpur-posive reaction hatcanbe inferred romcopies of books when combinedwith

otherevidence. It is this combinationwhichreveals the social relations,occa-

sions, andconventionsshapingthe producers'patternsof intention n and the

reader'spatternsof interactionwith thebook.34

Thepolitical and intellectualcutting-edge n this kindof studywill often

derive from the fact that the appliedtext looks more contingent,more selec-

tive, more fashioned,and more directedthanthe puretext. The text historian

may as a result seek to readto read the associated sources againsttheirown

grainin order o recoverwhathasbeenoccludedorexcludedin termsof social

experience or political agency.At the same time an appliedtext may reveal

fractures,discontinuities,andincommensurabilitieswithin a traditionheld to

have originatedwith a greatworkor a whole seriesof greatworks and to have

achievedcontinuityby means of its long-standingcritical ortuna. This is dif-

ferentfromtherelativisticdeconstruction f a traditionon speculativegroundsand is closely related to the consequencesof Kuhn'shistoriographyof para-

digms for a conventionalaccount of the history of rationalprogresstowards

the scientific truthabout the naturalworld.

Furthermore, s recentanthropologistsof art and commoditiesinsist, the

questionof whatthe artistwas doing in makingthe artefact using the artistic

capacities and conventionsavailable to consumersin his/her time) need not

necessarilyfeature n avaluableculturalanalysisof art.35Where tdoes feature

and producesdetailedanswers,a gulf may open up between the cultural as-

34 See JohnLocke, TwoTreatisesof Government:A Critical Edition with an Introduction

and ApparatusCriticus,ed. PeterLaslett(Cambridge,1960); and AnthonyGraftonand Lisa

Jardine, 'Studied for Action': How GabrielHarveyRead his Livy, Past and Present, 129

(1990), 30-78.35AlfredGell,ArtandAgency:AnAnthropologicalTheory Oxford, 1998);TheSocialLife

of Things:Commodities n CulturalPerspective,ed. ArjunAppadurai Cambridge,1986).




torical analysis of institutionalizeddisciplines, individualcareers,and indi-

vidual works might show, it has not always been that simple or thatopen in

practice.SvetlanaAlperswas surprisedby the resultsof a 1985 symposiumon

the question Artor Society: Must We Choose? (to be discussed in detail

below); the general answer,framed from very differentperspectives,was aqualified yes. Some leadingtext historiansseparatework thatgoes in direc-

tions opened up by the new historicismin text studiesfrom work thatgoes in

the directionof culturalhistoryevenwithina singlebook,as we shall see in the

conclusionbelow.41

Practice

Theprecedingdiscussion has been on one level anattempt o makehistori-

cal sense of a problemof direction thatrecursin the course of my own re-search.I refer to the point in the processwhereI sense the force of an obliga-tion to choose either to go back with a treasurehoardfrom explorationsof

widerculturalhistoryto theworld of textuality, o the-for me-safer activityof re-interpreting text,producinga new meaning, rto go on andrisknever

gettingback home o textualityat all. To go on means acceptingthe practi-

cal, ethical,andintellectualresponsibilitiesof a differentkind of pursuit, hose

of a generichistorianof culture as opposedto a culturalhistorianwho teaches

history in a history department),and no longer defining oneself solely as a

specialist in particularkinds of texts and theirinterpretationas, say, a practi-tionerof new historicist culturalpoetics ).This has consequencesformy ac-

tivities as a teacherof texts in Englishin a university.Before considering wo

practicalexamplesfrommy own research,considertwo fromthe work of se-

nior British scholars.

Paradigmsof Art andSociety in British IntellectualCulture:

Michael Baxandalland Lisa Jardine

In the early 1950s Michael Baxandallwas a studentof literarycriticismunder F. R. Leavis.42By the early 1960s he was writinghis earliestarticlesin

arthistoryunder he aegis of E. H. Gombrich.By 1971 he hadmovedthroughartinto culturalhistory: apictorialstyle gives access to the visual skills and

habits, and,through hese,to thedistinctivesocial experience of a culture.43n

a contribution o a Representationssymposium of 1985 at the peak of new

historicism he gave a fascinatingaccount of a failed piece of research.The

41 StephenGreenblatt,Hamlet in Purgatory(Princeton,2001).42 IanMacKillop,F R. Leavis.:A Life in Criticism Harmondsworth, 995), 8-9.

43 Baxandall,PaintingandExperience,152.



500 WarrenBoutcher

account can still serve as a lens to scrutinizemuch of the workwhich bridges

texts/ art andsocial/ culturalhistory-whether ornotwithintheexplicit idiom

of new historicism-in the currentclimate.44

In his contributionBaxandallrecalls his unwillingnessto return rom in-

quirieshe hadpursued nthe social andculturalhistoryof Siena,criticalequip-ment in hand,for an interpretation f the paintingwith which he had started,

AmbrogioLorenzetti's GoodGovernment. Moreparticularly, e hadstarted

fromcertainaestheticpeculiaritiesof the painting,partlyderivedfromjuxta-

positions with otherpaintingsof the periodandpartlya matterof the naked

eye. He thendid arespectableamountof reading n Sienese social history n

searchof the social facts thatwould match these peculiarities.In the differ-

ent circumstancesof arthistoryhe was looking for the equivalentof whathas

been describedhereas an appliedtext. Baxandallcaricatures he principalre-

sultingmatch as one between theunifyingfunction of Justice'sdancing girlsin the tidily roundcity in the paintingand contemporarymercantile Siena's

urgentneed for social cohesion in the urbansector of the state. This result,

however,did not satisfy him and the researchwent unpublished.He felt there

to be somethingmeretricious n the way he had used terms to matchpictorial

thing and social thing. Therewas no clear pictorial indicationof whether a

depictedsocial conditionwas fact or aspiration, epresentation r compensa-tion. The terms of relation he was using made a weak half-claim to some

stricter elation-of causalityorsignification ranalogyorparticipation-which

he ultimatelyfelt he could not uphold.He relied too much on prevaricatingwords such as reflect, represent, follow or come out of. Otherwords

such as balance orgedtoo abstractanduninterestinga connection between

thecompositionof thepictureand the desiredsocialrelationbetween townand

country.Baxandall'sconclusion is thattheweaknessof his termsof relationderives

fromthe overbearingexplanatorypressureput one way on the modulationof

society nto culture, where culture s understood svalues,beliefs,means

of expression,and the otherway on the modulationof art into society by

means of the idea of artas institutional. romthepointof view of thisarticle,Baxandall'sarguments not that heserelationscannotbeestablished, hat hese

modulationscannotbe made to work. Thepoint is, first,thatthey need to rest

on a more appliedbasis than the one he was able to posit in this piece of re-

search. Baxandallsubsequentlywent on to work out means of validatingthe

applicationof thisor thatbit of circumstance o the historicalexplanationof

a picture.Whereearlier n his careerhe had started rom worksof artandgonein the directionof a culturalhistoryof distinctivesocial experience, n Pat-

44MichaelBaxandall, Art,Society,and heBouguerPrinciple, Representations, 2(1985),32-43. Thesymposiumwas chairedandeditedby SvetlanaAlpers.




terns of Intention he was to found an applied art criticism on a method for

explainingpaintingsas the solutions to specificproblems n concretehistorical

situations.45

The second importantpoint to be taken fromBaxandall's contribution o

the Representationssymposium and from Patterns of Intention is thereforethat the terms of relationbetweenpictureandsociety will not work eitheras a

culturalpoetics or as a sociology of culture which aims historically to

explainand contain he total aestheticformof theartefact, o matchthe form of

a pictureor a text and the form of a society. Baxandall here pins down the

methodologicalmoves that can result in the confinementof the energiesof a

text within an all-encompassingweb of meaningor an all-powerfulset of so-

cial institutions.46

This is in effect a valuablecritiqueof the excesses of 1980s new histori-

cism. Baxandalldoes not saythathe is offeringsuchacritiqueanddoes not usetheterm cultural oetics, butStephenGreenblatt ppears n the samesympo-sium with his work on King Lear and exorcism, and the journal is after all

Representations.47here s no question hat hespecific bridgeGreenblattmakes

in his piece betweenEdgar'stheatrical mpostureas poorTom andcontempo-

raryestablishmentexposure of the fraudulent heatricalityof phenomenaof

demonicpossession is anoriginal,valid andenduringone. Thesame could be

said of Louis Montrose'sbridgebetween the situationof Orlandoat thebegin-

ning of As YouLike It and the place of the younger brother n Elizabethan

society, as also of Lisa Jardine'sbridge between Emilia's Why should he

[Othello]callherwhore? andtheconstitution f a verbal ncidentas an event-

a technical defamation-within an earlymoderncommunity.48Theproblem s what onetriesto buildon oraround hebridge,whichway

it is traversedand with whatpurpose.Onehasthreeapplied exts,preciousand

rareglimpses of culturenot as a reifiedthingbut as a socially distinctiveform

of experienceconsistingof aninteractionbetween apiece of artand a groupof

people. Onehas a view from betweenthe literaryhistoryandthesocial historyof the connectionbetween the textualand the social in termsof a sharedcom-

munalexperienceof possession or of the statusof a disenfranchised oungerbrother or of witnessed verbal events as defamation. n Greenblatt'scase,

the movement of the [subsequent] nterpretations the passage from art to

45 Baxandall,Patternsof Intention,118-21.

46 See MoragShiach, 'CulturalStudies' and the Workof PierreBourdieu, French Cul-

turalStudies,4 (1993), 213-23.

47 StephenGreenblatt, Exorcism ntoArt, Representations,12 (1985), 15-23.48 Louis Montrose, 'The Place of a Brother' nAs YouLike It: Social Process and Comic

Form, ShakespeareQuarterly, 2 (1981),28-54;LisaJardine, 'Whyshouldhe call herwhore?'Defamationand Desdemona'sCase, AddressingFrankKermode:Essays in CriticismandIn-

terpretation, d. MargaretTudeau-Clayton nd MartinWamer(London, 1991), 124-53.




Williamstraditionof new social and culturalhistorybutsympatheticneverthe-

less to new historicism,Jardinewas another rained iterarycritic and intellec-

tual historian nterested n the questionwith which we started.She followed

predecessors ike Michael Baxandalland Natalie ZemonDavis in resistingthe

excesses of the powerfullytextualized andaestheticizedconceptof cultureatwork in the historicismof Greenblatt ndMontrose.Hermovementinsistentlyand repeatedly back-and-forth between particular dramatic moments in

Shakespeare'sOthello and the narrativesof defamation in the church court

records,a movementwhich respectedas far as possible the integrityof each

kindof context,textual-dramatic ndsocial, was the resultof a differentset of

choices aboutthe goals of research.

Jardinewas still lookingfor a match ut notamatchbetween the form of

theplayandthe formof our ulture,betweena representation nd a need.

Rather, theshapeof the tale becomes structurally ignificant,as it matches heshapesof othertales, told in the earlymodem community o other,more occa-

sional,judgmentalends. She was providinga strongparadigmof an appliedtext as a datumthatcan change ideas in both directions(literaryhistoryand

social history).Thejuxtapositionof dramatic ext anddepositionsvia the spe-cific historicalconnection of defamatorynarrativesharpensfor both literarycriticand socialhistorian hesense of shared ultural onventionswhere'lived

experience'was given expressionandacknowledgment. 51Most importantlyt

sharpens he distinctionbetweenprivately circulatingrumorandgossip anda

publicverbal event of defamation n the communalsphereto which an active,

judicial responsecan be made. In this way talkaboutwomen, both on the

partof modem critics of Othello and as a matterof eventswithintheplay,can

be historicizedas a culturallyandhistoricallyvariousphenomenon,which calls

up differentresponses, includingaction, in differentcircumstances.This was

neither culturalpoetics, nor culturalhistory,but something in between, a

moreappliedbrandof intellectualandculturalhistorycentered n text studies

but not confined to issues of textuality.Itwas ultimatelyaboutsomethingthat

women could do.

Applyingthe AnnotatedBook in EarlyModemIntellectualHistory

There follow two briefattempts o situateanswersto the questionposed at

the beginningof this articlein accounts of case-studies in appliedintellectual

history.The firstexample uxtaposesChristopherMarlowe'spoemonthe theme

of Hero andLeander 1598) and a contemporaryEnglishhumanist'sannota-

tions in a printed ext of an epic Spanishversion of the same theme (1543). I

was interested,as othershave been, in peculiarfeaturesof Marlowe'spoem:

51Jardine, 'Why should he call herwhore?', 142.



504 WarrenBoutcher

Leander's ong, ineptoration, he strangedigressionin the middle,the endingin mediasres.The standardhistoricizingapproachesaddressed hequestionof

what Marlowewas doing with the Greek source, intertextualrelationswith

otherEnglishepyllia, theories aboutthe role and statusof poetry,thepoet and

thepoet's self, literary-theoreticalssues of genderandpower.Itappeared romthe secondaryliterature hat Hero and Leander, a greatpoem which most

teachersof literaturewouldwant a student o read,has remained n therapidly

dwindlingEnglishRenaissance eachingcanonlargelythanks o proponentsof

culturalpoetics.52 n theirhands the preoccupationsof modem gay culture n-

formthe reconstruction f thepoem's historicallyspecific form of homoeroti-

cism.

How could I recover an appliedbasis for assessing the poem's cultural

relationship o its readersand to other literatureof the period? Assuming the

poem to have been composed some time in the 1580s or early 1590s, I castaround or contemporary ieces of evidence for the circulationof the storyof

Hero and Leander n Englandandin particularor the kindof evidence which

providesmaterialfor the social historyof the book andof reading. AlthoughMarlowe mentions only the GreekauthorMusaeus,a differentand insistent

answer cameup from threesources connectedwith Englishhumanistcontem-

porariesof Marlowe,those of Ovid and the Spanishpoet Boscin.53

When I consultedBartholomewYong's annotations n a copy of Boscanandcompared hem withAbrahamFraunce'srhetoricalanalysisof selections

from the volume of Boschn and Garcilaso'sSpanishverse (in his rhetorical

manual) foundmymatch.Bothhumanist eaders oncentratedeavily,amongstallthepoemsinthevolume,onBosctn's Leandroandthe first wo of Garcilaso's

eclogues. Withinthese poems they tended to highlight or markup the ora-

tions andthe narrativepastoraldigressions.Thematch, then,was betweenthe

eye contemporarymale humanist readershad for narrativedigressions and

declamatory et-piecesin the SpanishLeandroand the digressive pastoralhis-

toryandlengthy pseudo-orationMarlowe nserts nhis Hero andLeander.The

contemporary rominenceof theSpanishpoeminEnglish literary ulturemade

historicalsense of thejuxtaposition.I hadmy appliedtext,which amounted otheevidenceconcretely inkingthepoem's formwithhabitsof literaryanalysissharedby a particulargroupof male readersandappliedto a sharedcanon of

classical andvernacularexts. Furthermore, beganto notice thatthe forms of

the two poems had a common structure,a triptychwith a digressive center-

52 See Bruce R. Smith,HomosexualDesire in ShakespearesEngland:A CulturalPoetics

(Chicago,1991), 132-36;GregoryW.Bredbeck,SodomyandInterpretation:Marloweto Milton

(Ithaca,N.Y., 1991), 127-29.

53 See WarrenBoutcher, 'Who taughtthee Rhetoricke o deceive a maid?':ChristopherMarlowe'sHero and Leander,JuanBoscan's Leandro,and RenaissanceVernacularHuman-

ism, ComparativeLiterature,52 (2000), 11-52.




piece, andthatthere seemed to be closer imitativerelationships hanhad hith-

erto been noticed betweentheEnglishandSpanishdigressions.When I reachedthis point halfway throughthe research,the temptation

was to flee back across the bridge with my data from the social history of

readingandre-interpretMarlowe'spoem using the interpretivekey providedby a new understanding f the digressionat its center.At thevery sametime I

beganto be aware of otherpossibilities.Thehomoerotic tease n Marlowe's

poem might now be grounded n a specific sense of sharedhumanist iterary

preoccupationsand the politics of the new social formsof intimacyor friend-

shipbetween menthey engendered.54This could be placedin a still widerper-

spective: firstly, the Spanishand Europeanculturalcontexts of the Boscin-

Garcilasovolume, one of the most successful books of lyric poetrypublishedin the sixteenthcentury,and second, the importation,ownership,and use of

such books in Englandas a culturalconditionof the Elizabethan iteraryRe-naissance.

It was at thispoint thata draftof thepiece went into ajournalof new and

comparative iteraryhistoricism,ComparativeLiterature.Thereadersspotted

my uncertaintyover direction andthe best of them recommendedunequivo-

cally that themain event should remain thereadingof Marlowe and that

thetitle shouldreflect the fact. 55t is worthnotingthatno equivalent mpera-tive to make the readingof poetry-English or otherwise-the main event in

my research s implied by my employmentas a universityteacher of English

literature.My institution,the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary,

Universityof London,is committedto a very broadandinclusive conceptof

Englishstudies,a conceptI am defendingin this article.

The problemwas that in the meantimeI had become less not more con-

vinced thatthe readingof Marlowe was the mainevent thatMarlowewas the

main culturalevent, and not Boscan. The main cultural events in the storyseemed now to lie in the 1520s and 1530s, in the genesis of Boscan and

Garcilaso's book within the culturalcontext of the triumphant ampaignsof

CharlesV and the Duke of Alba and in the precedentthis set within notjust

English but Europeanculture.My context would not keep still as a fixedframewithinwhich to re-interpretmy textbut hadbegunto displacetextas the

centerof attention,not for the first time. However, the particularapproachI

was takingto this context, the reasonwhy it seemed interesting,would have

been differentif I had not startedfrom an interestin Marlowe's text and its

peculiarities.The appliedtext hadchangedideas in both directions.

54 AlanStewart,CloseReaders:Humanism ndSodomynEarlyModernEngland Princeton,

1997).55

I amimplyingno criticism of ComparativeLiteraturehere.Thejournalcombines a clear

focus with efficiency, professionalism,and editorial lexibility.



506 WarrenBoutcher

Whatnow seemed crucialwas a recoveryof thespecific form of theshared

culturalexpectations hatwere callingforth,with self-consciousbelatedness,a

national English literature n the 1580s and 1590s. Shapingthis literature

was a perceptionof the powerfulculturalprecedentsalreadyset by authorita-

tive relationshipsbetweenliterary extsproduced n the international ernacu-larsof France,Spain,andtheItalianstates andthehumanists'canon of ancient

classical modelsand also between therecent nterconnecting istories of those

empiresand states and their wars and the canonicalhistoryof the states and

empires of the ancientworld. Paradigmaticof this was the relationshipbe-

tween Boscan's Leandroand Ovid's Heroides, 1520s and 1530s triumphsof

CharlesV and the Duke of Alba, and the triumphsof the Caesarsof ancient

Rome.Thisandotherparadigms reated heexpectationabouttherelationshipbetween contemporaryhumanistreaderssuch as Yong, Fraunce,and Gabriel

Harveyandtheirpatrons'classical andmodemcontinental exts inGreek,Latin,French,Spanish,andItalian.Theirsharedexpectationwas that an Englishhe-

roic literature f translations ndimitationswould insert tselfbelatedlywithin

this establishedcontinentalscene. It formedpartof the ideological contextof

forward rotestantism.Despitethe factthatoppositionto SpanishHabsburg

Europedefinedthe internationalProtestantmovement,the latterreliedheavilyon Spanish imperial precedents n the spheresof culture,politics, and enter-

prise.ThepoliticalexpectationnformedbytheseSpanishprecedentsof the 1520s

and 1530s, that the EnglishProtestant tate and its noble soldiersandgeneralswould assertthemselves in continentalculture,politics, andwarfare,was at its

height nthe 1580sand 1590s. Hencethepositioningof PhillipSidney'sArcadia

between GreekHeliodorus,ItalianSannazaroand SpanishMontemayorand

the culturalsignificanceof the NetherlandscampaignagainstSpainin which

Sidney fought,died, andgaineda European eputation.All this begins to ex-

plainthe set of expectations hatmighthave surrounded n Englishedversion

of Heroand Leander n the 1580s, early 1590s.The invitationon theone hand

is to thinkabouthow theywereexploitedby Marlowe;on the otherhand t was

to move towarda studyof the culturalpolitics of heroicsentiment n sixteenth-

centuryEurope.But the questionatthispoint in theresearchwas: is it appropriater desir-

able to follow thejournal'sdirection n going back to the main event of a re-

readingof Marlowe'spoem as the centraltext in the investigationand as a

central text in the EuropeanRenaissance vernacularliterarycanon (which

Boscin's poem is not)? One incentiveto answeryes came fromprofessionaland pedagogical considerations.How would I convert this research into an

approachwhichwould engage students n a classroomwhen no Englishtrans-

lations are availableof Bosc~in'spoemandwhenitwould be necessaryto teach

a large slice of RenaissanceEuropeanculturalhistory before getting to the




point for studentswho have enjoyed readingMarlowe's text? On the other

hand,how could my exclusive goal now be to returnwith this material o ex-

plaintheaestheticformtakenby Marlowe'spoemwhen,promptedby thespe-cific detailsof the relationshipbetweenMarlowe's text andthe prioritiesof a

certainkind of contemporary eader,I hadbecome interested n the Europeanculturalconditionsof the attempt o forman Englished ersionof a priorset

of classical-modern extual andhistoricalrelationships?My strong nclination

in otherwords was to pursuethepathsthatopened up in bothdirections,butI

felt myself constrainedby institutionalandpractical actors.ThejournalI had

chosenputcertainobligationson thedirectionof the researchandthearticleas

publishedreflectsmy attemptas it proceededwithin theparametersetby that

obligation.

Applyingthe EditedText in Modem IntellectualHistory

The secondexampleis a piece of researchpublishedhereforthe firsttime

on two books that the greatestRenaissancescholar of the twentiethcentury,Paul OskarKristeller,prepared orpublication n Italyin 1937 and 1938, after

havingbeen exiled fromGermany n 1933-34. One was a philological edition

of texts by Marsilio Ficino thathad not been publishedin the early printededitionsof Ficino'sworks,the other a monographon Ficino's speculativephi-

losophy.56The first duly made it into printunderthe auspices of the Scuola

Normale at Pisa in 1937; the second was supposedto be issued by Sansoniin1938 but was blockedby theanti-semitic egislation brought nby Mussolini's

government hatyear.My principalnterestwas inthe fact that hebetter-known

textual edition had originally been designed as a complementto the mono-

graph,which was publishedduringthe war in English and afterthe war in

Italian. For the monographseemed to have only a very obscureplace in the

post-war prominenceof Kristelleras the founderin the United States of the

criticalhistoriography f Renaissancephilosophy.57ndeed,readin the Italian

text made readyfor publication n 1938, it did not seem like the work of the

assimilatedAmericancitizen of the 1950s and 1960s. It seemed, above all,morepoliticallyandintellectuallycommitted hananythingKristellerwrotein

thepost-warperiodandmorecharacterized y thelanguageof Europeanphilo-

sophicalhistoricism.Fromhis base in ColumbiaUniversity,Kristellergained

widespreadacademicrecognitionfrom the Americanand international om-

56 PaulOskarKristeller,Supplementum icinianum:MarsiliiFicini Florentiniphilosophiplatonici opuscula inedita et dispersa primumcollegit et exfontibusplerumquemanuscriptisediditauspiciisregiaescholae normalissuperiorispisanae Paulus Oscarius Kristeller(2 vols.;

Florence,1937);andIIPensierofilosofico di MarsilioFicino (1953; Florence, 1988).57 JohnMonfasaniis gatheringandeditinga collection of essays that will documentthis

prominence.



508 WarrenBoutcher

munityof Renaissancescholarsduring hepost-warperiod;but he gainedthis

recognitionnot forhis work on Ficinoandphilosophicalspeculationbut forhis

bibliographicalprojectson manuscript esources,his generaltextbookson the

historyof Renaissance hought,and-above all-for his historicizationof hu-

manism.58The significanceof Kristeller'shistoricistapproach o humanism ay in a

growing perceptionthat some philosophersand Renaissancescholars in the

post-warperiodwere runningthe risk of generalizingparticularmomentsof

humanism'spastas ideological support or intellectualprojects ocatedfirmlyin the republicanor liberaldemocraticpresent.Kristeller'sexcavationof the

historicalcontinuities n the professionalcultivationof a set of transmissible

literary kills throughouthe medieval andrenaissanceperiodsdissociatedhu-

manismperse fromany particular deologicalposition.However,theadoption

of this revisionist emphasisran the opposite risk, in his disciples' hands,of

makingall humaneknowledgethat s embedded n thepassionsandinterestsof

a particularmomenta matterof mere rhetoric, herebyauthenticating nly

pure peculationandemptyingthehistoryof humanismof commitmentand

public ideological significance.The questionsI began to formulatewere these. What had been screened

out in termsof Kristeller'sown commitments n theprocessof his highly suc-

cessful assimilationto Americanacademicculture?Whatin his own andhis

generation'sexperiencemighthave motivated hisparticular istoricizationof

humanism?I startedout by attempting o recover somethingof the pre-war

philosophicalcontext of Kristeller'swork. This was notactuallyverydifficult,

for Kristellerhimself hadmeticulouslylaidout the intellectualcontext needed

to understand is earlywork onFicino.59Hisown leadshelpus insert he Ficino

workwithin the riseof theacademicsub-disciplinewhichfinally gave respect-

abilityto the historiographyof Renaissance,as opposedto classical or medi-

eval ormodem (CartesianandKantian)philosophy.From Kristeller'spointof

view this historiographys continuous fromthe 1880s to the present day and

itself constructs till longercontinuities n thehistoryof westernphilosophical

traditions.One can document the proposed match here very precisely by

demonstratinghe relationshipbetween the idiom and method of Kristeller's

Italianmonographon Ficino and that of thenew inter-wargenerationof ideal-

ist textbooksonthehistoryof philosophy.The textbooks nquestiongavemuch

58 Forexample,andrespectively:IterItalicum.:A FindingListof Uncataloguedor Incom-

pletely CataloguedHumanisticManuscriptsof the Renaissancein Italian and OtherLibraries,

Volume, Italy:AgrigentotoNovara,ed. Paul OskarKristeller Leiden, 1963);TheRenaissance

Philosophy of Man, eds. ErnstCassirer,Paul OskarKristeller,and John Herman RandallJr.

(Chicago, 1948), Paul OskarKristeller, Humanismand Scholasticismin the Italian Renais-sance, Byzantion:InternationalJournalof ByzantineStudies, 17 (1944-45), 346-74.

59 See theprefacesto IIPensierofilosofico.




more space and dignity thanwas traditionallyallocated to Renaissancephi-

losophyandfurthermorensistedon theconnectionbetween thehistoryof phi-

losophy, the editing of texts, and the actualphilosophicallife of speculationinto which studentswere to be encouragedat the various levels from middle

school to elite university.One could stopthere,with a perfectly respectablepiece of criticalhistory

of philosophy,in the mold that Kristellerhimself helped institute n America.

But what of the culturaldimension of the historyof philosophicaltexts and

teaching,andof the discontinuitieswhich we have seen tendto emergemore

insistently in that dimension? The bridge in this case was the juxtapositionbetweena text fromthe backof Kristeller'sSupplementum, nd a photographof a civic occasionwhichtookplace in the villa of theItalian-JewishpublisherLeo Olschkiin April 1937.60 This finally providedthe appliedtext I had been

looking for. Whatwe see is GiovanniGentile,Kristeller's Italianmentor and

patron, naugurating n exhibition of Renaissancephilosophicalandhumanis-

tic manuscripts n the presenceof importantdignitariesand scholars.At the

end of the speechhe was also to present Kristelleras the authorof thepub-lished SupplementumFicinianum and the soon-to-be publishedmonograph.

Here,once again,we have a glimpse of a particularormof historicalrelation-

ship between a social groupand a set of archivaland relatednew, scholarlytexts.Webegin to apprehend distinctiveculturaldimensionto the exhibition

andproductionof philosophicaland humanist exts from the era of theMedici

in late 1930s FascistItaly.Thepursuitof that dimensiontakesone in different

directions,furtherandfurther rom the taskof an interpretationf Kristeller's

texts within the traditional rameworkof criticalhistoryof philosophy.One is

working towardsa contributionboth to the history of culture and education

under talianFascismandtothehistoryof theintellectual migration.Kristeller's

life is particularlypoignant n this respectas his first and failed emigration, o

Italy, was in many intellectual and social respects more promisingthan his

subsequentandsuccessfulemigration o the United States.

Onthisoccasion,theinvestigations madeintothebackground f thepho-

tograph ook me into the field of the social and institutionalhistoryof educa-

tion.61They revealedhow completelyKristeller'swork on Ficino in Italybe-

tween 1934 and 1939 was articulated,presented,andpublicized throughthe

cultural nstitutionsandmilieux that derived fromGiovanni Gentile's educa-

tionalriformaof 1923.Throughout is life, Kristellerwas wholeheartedly om-

mitted to the educationalpolitics that lay behind this riforma,thoughhe ex-

60 Thephotographspublished n Centrotredicinni:Catalogostoricodella mostra:Firenze

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale 22 aprile-23 maggio 1999, ed. Alessandro Olschki(Florence,

1999), 77.61 See, for example, Fare gli italiani: scuola e cultura nell'lItaliacontemporanea,eds.

SimonettaSoldani and GabrieleTuri(2 vols.; Bologna,c. 1993).



510 WarrenBoutcher

pressed his commitmentmore nthe Italian han nthe Americanpublicsphere.62

Historyhadmoved on. Thekind of education n classicalphilology andspecu-lative philosophyhe believed fundamental o western civilization was simplynot a possibility in post-warAmerica;in Italy it remaineda half-reality, f a

constantlyopposedandcompromisedhalf-reality.What we see in the photograph, in short, is the public activation of

Kristeller's combinationof neoplatonismand philology as a civic and peda-

gogical examplewithin a particular ubcultureof Fascist Italy.The situation

gets still more complicatedand particularwhen we considerthatthe photo-

graph tselfhas a culturalhistory.Forin thetotallydifferentconditionsof 1944

it was circulatedby Leo's son Leonardo as the relic of the pre-warculture

which was sustaininghis hopes for the futurein the desperationof the war

years.63Eugenio Garinwould later see it in similarterms, as the bridgebe-

tween the humanecultureof the pre-waryears and the attemptedpost-warreconstruction f thatculture n Italianeducationandsociety.64

Analyzedmoredispassionately,however,it becomesa glimpseof one his-

torical manifestationof thepossible relationsbetweenscholarlytextualwork,

philosophicalthought,andthe educational nstitutionsandpolitical elite of a

particularsociety. The relationsbetween Ficino's thoughtand quattrocentoMedici society would be anothersuch historicalmanifestation,different n its

own particularway. By Septemberof 1938, one of the dignitariespresent,

GiuseppeBottai,was enforcingthe new, anti-semitic egislationin the educa-

tional and culturalsphere.Gentilehimself did not publically opposethe legis-

lation, thoughof coursehe did help Kristellerandothers find routesto other

countriesand otheremployment.The Florentine ivic humanism apturedn

the photograph enters on the assimilationof the services of scholarlyJewish

benemeriti-Leo Olschki in the past and Paul Kristellerin the present--toItaliannationalculture.Such assimilationprovedexpendablewhen it came to

thepoliticalcrunchof a fascistregimeimposingits ideology on people's lives.

A momentof humanistcultureand theideologicalcommitments hatwentwith

it passed into history.

School of EnglishandDrama,QueenMary,Universityof London.

62 ColumbiaUniversity,OralHistoryResearchOffice, PaulOskarKristeller, ranscript f

interviewswith WilliamLiebmann,13March 1981 to 25 February1982,217.

63 Casa EditriceLeo S. Olschki S.r.l.,Viuzzo del Pozzetto 8, 50126 Florence,Miscella-

neousfolder, MaterialeKristeller archive nprocessof being inventoried),LeonardoOlschki

to ElviraOlschki, 19 June1944.64EugenioGarin, AldoOlschki,editore, Olschkiunsecolo di editoria1886-1986 II:La

casa editriceLeo S. Olschki(1946-1986), ed. Stefano De Rosa(Florence,1986), 168-71.

pure texts, applied texts, literary historicisms, cultural histories

Documents