Richard Strier

This essay explores the epistemological implications of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It distinguishes among metaphors—some are mere "figures of speech," others have descriptive (and prescriptive) power, while others seem to be literalized in the action. The claim that lovers are epistemologically advantaged with regard to the love object is seen as both explored and mocked. The role of the fairies and the "love potion" is examined. Both are to be recognized as fictions. Theseus's speech about lovers, madmen, and poets is taken seriously, and the epilogue is taken as manifesting genuine anxiety that the play might be "reprehended."

Taking Wittgenstein's "Don't think, but look" as his motto, Richard Strier argues against the application of a priori schemes to Renaissance (and all) texts. He argues for the possibility and desirability of rigorously attentive but "pre-theoretical" reading. His approach privileges particularity and attempts to respect the "resistant structures" of texts. He opposes theories, critical and historical, that dictate in advance what texts must - or cannot - say or do. The first part of the book, "Against Schemes", demonstrates, in discussions of Rosemond Tuve, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Fish, among others, how both historicist and purely theoretical approaches can equally produce distortion of particulars. The second part, "Against Received Ideas", shows how a variety of texts (by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and others) have been seen through the lenses of fixed, mainly conservative ideas in ways that have obscured their actual, surprising, and sometimes surprisingly radical content.