Abstract

A recent book on new movements in literary criticism start with a quotation from a Renaissance scholar: "I began with the desire to speak with the dead."$\sp1$ In my case, I began with the desire to tell a particular dead person why he was wrong about a number of fundamental issues regarding the relation between Christianity and democratic capitalism. In the process, however, I learned that conversations with the dead, like those with the living, require one first to listen and seek to understand. My primary task, therefore, has been to learn how to train my ear to listen to the dead. ;The historiographic implications of that task are sketched in the introduction and first couple of chapters. Hence, I will not rehearse them here. Instead, I want to explain how training my ear to listen to Knight shifted the focus of my dissertation from Knight's views on religion and economic life to the general concerns of his early work. Although the shift was gradual, it is possible to identify three distinct stages. ftn$\sp1$ Stephen Greenblatt Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England , 1; quoted in H. Aram Veeser, "Introduction," in The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser , ix