<P>Stephen Greenblatt argued in these celebrated essays that the art of the Renaissance could only be understood in the context of the society from which it sprang. His approach - ''New Historicism'' - drew from history, anthropology, Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis and in the process, blew apart the academic boundaries insulating literature from the world around it. </P><P><EM>Learning to Curse</EM> charts the evolution of that approach and provides a vivid and compelling exploration of a complex and contradictory epoch. </P>