‘So that represented my own little rebellion’
Stephen Greenblatt is seventh in the Experience series, after Melissa Franklin, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Martha Minow, Steven Pinker, Walter Willett, and E.O. Wilson. Interviews with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Helen Vendler will appear in coming weeks. How many scholars of the Renaissance wind up as guests on “The Colbert Report”? It’s safe to say that Harvard literary theorist and critic Stephen Greenblatt is the only one. He used the appearance to trade Shakespearean jabs with the acerbic host, easily holding up his end of the bargain. In real life, Greenblatt — winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” — teaches in Harvard’s Department of English. Along with Shakespeare and early modern literature, his scholarly interests include the way literature intersects with travel, religion, and anthropology. He also teaches literary and cultural theory. During the 1980s, Greenblatt introduced New Historicism, a set...