Economic Metaphor By Jan Greenblatt

Jan R. Veenstra, in his examination of new historicism, draws upon Greenblatt and his “poetics of culture,” which determines the strong relationship between literary and historical texts and their socio-historical contexts. Greenblatt’s cultural poetics fosters the concept that texts are not merely a documentation of the social and political forces that make up history and society, but they also contribute remarkably to the social processes that refigure individual identity and the socio-political, historical situation (174). Veenstra maintains that Greenblatt’s “economic metaphor” enables texts and their symbolic significance to prevail in society insofar as the texts’ literary devices reflect the social energy circulating in other texts that speak of the same subject matter. He further elaborates that Greenblatt’s ideas on the nature of the text leads to a new method of interpretation, which foregrounds the socio-historical context that informs the text and gives it the tools by which it acquires new meanings. Accordingly, Veenstra asserts that with reference to Greenblatt, poetry and history are “forms of poesies, a creative force that pervades all domains of human activity” (176) which needs to be closely examined. Veenstra, in this regard, defines the text as “a human-made object” that “is radically informed by all the forces that condition and shape our societies and histories” (177).