Summary Of Stephen Greenblatt's Learning To Curse

In Stephen Greenblatt’s “Learning to Curse,” he discusses new historicism and its use of anecdotes or storytelling. He refers to the essay of Joel Fineman who says that the anecdotes “determines the destiny of a specifically historiographic integration of the event and context” is “the literary form or genre that uniquely refers to the real,” (4). This use of the anecdote steps outside of the literary and exceeds it entirely exploring what lies beyond this form. Using this in new historicism frames the events in the historical context it is set in. Greenblatt argues that anecdotes call for “explanation, contextualization and interpretation,” because they are a “disturbance,” (5). This can help to better connect with history in general and understand it as a whole rather than a sequence of events. He argues that history should not depart from the literary but strengthen it “by making it touch the effect of the real,”(5).

He says that his identity was first established in the telling of his life either by himself or his mother. We don’t have the capacity to know ourselves when we are babies, so we depend on stories from family members to see our identities through others. This is how we interpret our own history and better understand ourselves. This connection with stories and history is not only in your name specifically in the story, but also in “the heart of the initial experience of selfhood,”(5), that lies within the