Five Words

Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes

Greene Roland

Blood. Invention. Language. Resistance. World. Five ordinary words that do a great deal of conceptual work in everyday life and literature. In this original experiment in critical semantics, Roland Greene considers how these five words changed over the course of the sixteenth century and what their changes indicate about broader forces in science, politics, and other disciplines. Greene discusses a broad swath of Renaissance and transatlantic literature – including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Camoes, and Milton – in terms of the development of these words rather than works, careers, or histories. He creates a method for describing and understanding the semantic changes that occur, extending his argument to other words that operate in the same manner. Aiming to shift the conversation around Renaissance literature from current approaches to riskier enterprises, Greene also challenges semantic-historicist scholars, proposing a method that takes advantage of digital resources like full-text databases but still depends on the interpreter to fashion ideas out of ordinary language".Five Words" is an innovative and accessible book that points the field of literary studies in an exciting new direction.

About the Author

Roland Greene is the Mark Pigott OBE Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. His most recent book, "Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas", is also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"There is nothing like 'Five Words' in current criticism. Grounded upon deep erudition, it represents a genuine breakthrough in critical methodology, conceptual history, and the social and cultural task of locating literature among the other discourses. Roland Greene's efforts to relate and interrelate the implications of the 'five words' shape an overarching argument about critical semantics that will have great impact upon the entire field of literary study" – William Kennedy, Cornell University

"Roland Greene's new book is a brilliant exercise in cultural and linguistic criticism. Drawing on broad study in half a dozen languages and serious engagement with recent developments in critical thought, Greene guides his readers through nuanced readings of a set of key terms that shape the emergence of modernity. He shows how such seemingly innocent words as 'world' and 'invention' hide entire galaxies of meaning that shape the culture of the early modern period. Along the way, he develops a set of critical paradigms that will influence our understanding of the intersection of language and culture far beyond the confines of this excellent study" – Timothy Hampton, University of California, Berkeley

"One of our leading theorists in the field of European Renaissance literature offers an absorbing and important discussion of five dynamical concepts, rooted in particular words, which underwent profound change in the age of Shakespeare and Cervantes. These writers do not merely designate the age: they are the most influential writers in the West, and the deepest users of the words that have shaped the mind of the West. To understand other cultures, we need to understand the limits and the range of our own culture. This book is a timely contribution to that effort" – Gordon Teskey, Harvard University

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