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Stephen Greenblatt (b 1943) is one of the most influential American literary historians, and a central figure in modern humanities scholarship. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. The cornerstone of his legacy is his role as the primary architect of New Historicism, a theoretical approach that fundamentally reshaped literary criticism in the 1980s and 1990s.

The New Historicist methodology demands the reading of “sub-literary” and non-canonical documents side-by-side with “great works”. Greenblatt and his colleagues often prefer the term “cultural poetics”. This preferred terminology emphasises the poetics – the generative, creative act – of cultural systems. Cultural poetics focuses on how expressive acts, including art, are actively made up or generated alongside “other products, practices, discourses of a given culture”. This framing moves the inquiry beyond simple reflection, positioning literature as an active participant in the construction and negotiation of cultural meaning.

Greenblatt’s later work achieved significant crossover appeal, securing his status as a major public intellectual. His book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern earned him the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Similarly, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

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