New Historicism Criticism and theory.ppt

New Historicism

1. Timeline Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (360 BC-present ) Formalism , New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present ) Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present ) Marxist Criticism (1930s-present ) Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present ) Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present ) Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction [Post-Modernism] (1966-present ) New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present ) Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present ) Feminist Criticism (1960s-present ) Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)

2. New Historicism Cultural movement which flourished in the late 1970s and during the 1980s Name given to the American branch of Cultural Poetics

3. History Historical roots in Renaissance scholarship The term was coined by Stephen Greenblatt (American critic) His book- Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (1980) was its beginning Louis Montrose’s essay “’Eliza, Queene of Shepheardes ’ and the Pastoral of Power” J. W. Lever’s The Tragedy of State: A Study of Jacobean Drama challenged conservative critical views and linked the plays with the political events of the era.

4. The journal Genre (started in 1982) edited by Greenblatt , contained Renaissance essays and became a critical ‘site’ of literary theory. In 1983 Greenblatt and Svetlana Aplers launched another journal, Representations at the University of California. In the inaugural essay, “Discipline in Different Voices: Boureaucracy , Police, Family and Bleak House,” D. A. Miller articulates two of New Historicism’s major tenets: ( i ) Literary texts are embedded in social and political discourses, and (ii) all literary texts are vehicles of power.

5. In the next issue of Representations Louis A. Montrose published his essay, “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form,” expanding on Miller’s declaration that literary texts are seats of power. Jonathan Goldberg in his New Historical text, “James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries declared that different historical eras develop different “modes of power.”

6. Definition John Brannigan’s definition of the new historicism: “a mode of critical interpretation which privileges power relations as the most important context for texts of all kinds” ( New historicism and Cultural Materialism , 1998) As “a critical practice it treats literary texts as a space where power relations are made visible” It is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same historical period. It envisages and practises a mode of study in which literary and non-literary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform and interrogate each other

7. Key Points of New Historicism Call for a reawakening of historical consciousness Analyzes texts while acknowledging its historical context and the role history played in shaping the piece of literature Examines psychology and social sphere of author Acknowledges that bias and beliefs are present in literary work Focus on power relationships depicted within a work The critic himself is also stuck in his own time period/bias Similar to Marxism except it focuses on higher levels of social hierarchy rather than the working class; they are interested in government, church, institutions, culture

8. New historicism is a combined interest in the textuality of history, the historicity of texts Literary text within the frame of a non-literary text Makes use of Derrida’s notion that every facet of reality is textualised ‘ Defamiliarization ’ of the canonical literary text Focus on issues of State power and how it is maintained Influenced by Foucault’s idea of social structures as determined by dominant ‘discursive practices’

9. Literature should be read in relation to culture, history, society, and other factors. Lived experience rather than history Historical documents are not subordinated as contexts, but are analysed in their own right Co-texts rather than contexts Examines texts as narratives Takes as its object of study any cultural text, including written documents, rituals, performances, speeches, and advertisements, and any form of cultural practice that makes meaning within that culture.

10. New Historicists developed their idea by fusing the ethnography of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz with the philosophic history of Michel Foucault Geertz’s ethnography became celebrated in the 1960s and influenced the New Historicist practices With Geertz as their model the New Historicists attempted a “poetics of culture,” turning Renaissance culture into a series of art objects From the Marxist scholars- Georg Lukacs , Walter Benjamin, Ramond Williams they learned that history is shaped by the people who live in it.

11. New historicism accepts Derrida’s view that there is nothing outside the text, in the sense that everything about the past is only available to us in textualised form. It is ‘thrice-possessed’, first through the ideology, or outlook, or discursive practices of its own time, then through those of ours, and finally through the distorting web of language itself.

12. Differences between New and Old historicisms The New historicist practice of giving equal weight to literary and non-literary texts – first point of difference. The old historicism as represented in F. M. W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture (1943) and Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944) described the conservative mental attitudes, typical Elizabethan outlook, practised ‘close-reading’ and analysed ‘patterns of imagery’. New historicism is a historicist rather than a historical movemen t. It is interested in history as represented and recorded in written documents, in history as text. Historical events as such are irrecoverably lost.

13. The Old historicists believed that history served as background in formation for textual analysis and that historians were objectively able to reproduce any historical period. Differs from older historicist criticism because they see history not as linear and progressive, but as subjective and biased; there are multiple interpretations of a work and its context

14. Important Figures: The Big Three Stephen Greenblatt Born on November 7, 1943 Stephen Greenblatt is known as one of the fathers of the new historicism. His studies of the Renaissance established him as a major figure in the theory and as one of the greatest interpreters of the theory itself. Greenblatt’s work with the Renaissance made New Historicism well known in the study of Renaissance history, but this theory later leaked down to other types of literature. Greenblatt is probably the most well known for the theory. Michael Foucault Born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, Foucault is also well known for popularizing the Queer theory. Quite possibly one of the most influential critics of the last quarter-century, his interest in literary studies has also influenced new theories in political science and history. Foucault’s questioning of the theory itself has inspired countless critics to explore the theory. Foucault is best known for picking up terms and giving them a new meaning. Foucault died of AIDS on June 25, 1984 in Paris, France. Alan Liu One of the prominent theorists of the time, Liu is also put into the same group as Greenblatt . Both Greenblatt and Liu are very prominent in the field and are known for rejecting the term “New Historicism”.

15. Greenblatt Juxtaposed the plays of the Renaissance period with the horrifying colonial policies pursued by all the major European powers of the era Draws attention to “the marginalization and dehumanizing of suppressed Others” (Hugh Grady)

16. In 1987, Greenblatt published an essay, “Toward a Poetics of Culture” highlighting how New Historicists read and view literature in relation to culture and society Used the ideas of two post- structuralist critics Jean-Francois Lyotard and Frederic Jameson in saying how art and society are interrelated. In 1988, he expands his ideas in the text, Shakespearean Negotiations in which he refers to his reading practice as “Cultural Poetics” rather than New Historicism

17. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Declares that history is not linear. It does not have a definite beginning, a middle, and an end History is the complex interrelationship of a variety of discourses, or the various ways- artistic, social, political, and so on. The interaction of such discourses is dependent on a unifying principle or pattern called ‘episteme’ Through language and thought, each period in history develops its own perceptions concerning the nature of reality; sets up its own acceptable and unacceptable standards of behaviour ; establishes its own criteria for judging good or bad

18. Historians must expose each layer of discourse that comes together to shape a people’s episteme History is a form of power History becomes the study and unearthing of a vast, complex web of interconnecting forces that determine the culture of a society Historians must realize that they are influenced and prejudiced by the episteme(s) in which they live. Their thoughts, customs, habits, and other actions are colored by their epistemes . Historians can never be totally objective about their own or other historical period.

19. The Panoptic (all-seeing) state maintains its surveillance not by physical force and intimidation, but by the power of its ‘discursive practices’ “social relations are, intrinsically, relations of power” Foucault’s work looks at the institutions which enable this power to be maintained, such as State punishment, prisons, the medical profession and legislation about sexuality

20. Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), the anthropologist There exists “no human nature independent of culture” Culture is defined as “a set of control mechanisms – plans, recipes, rules, instructions” that govern behaviour . Each person must be viewed as a cultural artifact.