New Historicism

1. New Historicism

2. New Historicism occurred in response to: “New Criticism’s tendency to treat works of literature in a historical vacuum, as if a poem or novel had no relation to its historical context whatsoever

3. New Historicist premises • Images and narratives do important cultural work. They function as a kind of workshop (or playroom) where cultural problems, hopes, and obsessions are addressed or avoided.

4. New Historicist Premises • Consequently, New Historicists argue that the best framework for interpreting literature is to place it in its historical context: what contemporaneous issues, anxieties, and struggles does the work of literature reflect, refract, or try to work through?

5. New Historicist Premises • New Historicist criticism try to relate interpretive problems to cultural-historical problem. • New Historicists also tends to stress that authors and poets are not secular saints—that even though they may be more circumspect about their societies than the average citizen, they nonetheless participate in it.

6. Some complaints about New Historicism • It tends to reduce literature to a footnote of history, and neglects the uniquely literary qualities of the work in question. • Frederick Jameson argues that much New Historicist criticism lacks a theory of history. That history, to a paraphrase, “just happens”, without explaining why it happens in the way that it does and who is affected.

7. Important New Historicist Critics, texts, and Trends • Steven Greenblatt has been the guiding force in New Historicist criticism, and since he writes in the field of Renaissance studies, that was the first period to generate lots of New Historicist criticism.

8. Important New Historicist Critics, texts, and Trends • It has since become important in criticism of Medieval, and nineteenth century British and American literature, and is working through criticism of modernist literature and eighteenth century literature.