Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt
Greenblatt in 2004
Greenblatt in 2004
BornStephen Jay Greenblatt
(1943-11-07) November 7, 1943 (age 81)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation
  • Writer
  • professor
LanguageEnglish
EducationYale University (BA, PhD)
Pembroke College, Cambridge (MPhil)
SubjectNew Historicism, Shakespeare, Renaissance
Notable awardsNational Book Award for Nonfiction, Pulitzer Prize
SpouseEllen Schmidt (1969–1996)
Ramie Targoff (1998–)
Children3

Stephen Jay Greenblatt (born November 7, 1943) is an American literary historian and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the general editor and a contributor to The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Greenblatt is one of the founders of new historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on The New York Times Best Seller list for nine weeks.[1] He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2012 and the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2011 for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.[2][3]

  1. ^ Rachel Donadio (January 23, 2005). "Who Owns Shakespeare?". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2012.
  2. ^ "The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners". Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  3. ^ "2011 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 25, 2014.