Abstract

In this thesis, Henry V and its critical context are used as a context for examining critics attached to the critical issues that underpin the tension in literary studies between more traditional approaches to texts and contemporary developments within criticism. Moreover, critics are organized through an understanding of the social production of knowledge so as to consider connections between their different critical discourses on Henry V and the possible production of knowledge through their critical interaction. This thesis is not meant to suggest, however, huge epistemic claims. Rather, the term knowledge means here more simply a possible way of approaching and appreciating critical diversity; namely, the criticism surrounding Henry V is understood communally as a kind of critical conversation on the diversity within literary studies produced through a network of inter-relating critical texts.