In his novel, “Renaissance Self Fashioning”, Stephan Greenblatt boldly proclaims that we are in fact not the principal makers of our own identity (257). While this radical declaration leaves the reader feeling powerless and confused as to who, or what, has primary control over their identity, Greenblatt certainly has all of the answers and goes onto explain the concepts of identity, autonomy, and self-fashioning. Furthermore, he examines the development of self-fashioning throughout the course of history, how it can be seen in modern-day, and its overall power on society.
In order to do all of this, one must understand what exactly self-fashioning even is, which Greenblatt defines as the process of constructing one’s identity, or at least their public persona, according to social norms and standards. However, society is constantly changing, meaning that our self-fashioned identities are too. For example, a typical Renaissance man would have strived to fit the social norm of being powerful and strong, while woman wanted to be beautiful, modest and pure. Nowadays, society is accepting the idea that men can have more of an emotional side, while the new ideal woman is strong, powerful, and doesn’t necessarily conform to beauty standards. After reading about this concept of self-fashioning, I began to question its dominance in my life and the lives of people around me. After some examination, I began to realize that both myself and most of my friends have been self-fashioned, but that the social norms that we have fashioned ourselves to all vary based on how we were raised, where we grew up, and multiple other factors. For example, most of my Atlanta friends see education as the only way to find success and plan on attending a prestigious college and graduate school regardless of if they know what to study. However, this is likely because most of our parents took this exact path and are successful in their respective employments. Meanwhile, in a small town where I spend my summers in Michigan, college is certainly not the norm. As I enter my senior year, this has become increasingly noticeable in even the way adults phrase questions regarding my future. For example, Atlantan adults always ask “where do you plan to attend college?” while Michiganders tend to ask “what are your plans after graduation?” While these questions may seem awfully similar, their small difference reflects the huge discrepency in the idols various groups of people choose to fashion themselves to. Essentially, Greenblatt’s piece taught me that we all self-fashion ourselves to an extent, whether that be to a religious figure, our parents, or just society’s vision of an ideal person. This radical idea has made me much more aware of my own identity, what aspects of it are in control, and what social norms I adhere to. I believe that this reading was helping in preparing me for AP Lit because of its challenging and the impactful points it made in connecting literature to self-fashioning. Now when examining texts in class, we can pose questions relating to what form self-fashioning was taking at the time and how it has evolved.
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AuthorHi, my name is Perrin Kendall and I'm a senior at The Galloway School. This is my AP Lit blog where I will be conceptualizing, synthesizing, and sharing my own thoughts about various readings. Archives
December 2019
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