new historicism thesis

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics

Literary and Critical Theory

• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section New Historicism

Introduction, general overviews.

• Essay Collections
• Theoretical Influences
• Scholarly Influences
• Book-Length Studies
• Feminist Studies
• New New Historicism, or New Materialism

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Jonathan Goldberg
• Michel de Certeau
• Michel Foucault

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Black Atlantic
• Dick Hebdige
• Postcolonialism and Digital Humanities
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

New Historicism by Neema Parvini LAST REVIEWED: 26 July 2017 LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0015

New historicism has been a hugely influential approach to literature, especially in studies of William Shakespeare’s works and literature of the Early Modern period. It began in earnest in 1980 and quickly supplanted New Criticism as the new orthodoxy in early modern studies. Despite many attacks from feminists, cultural materialists, and traditional scholars, it dominated the study of early modern literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Arguably, since then, it has given way to a different, more materialist, form of historicism that some call “new new historicism.” There have also been variants of “new historicism” in other periods of the discipline, most notably the romantic period, but its stronghold has always remained in the Renaissance. At its core, new historicism insists—contra formalism—that literature must be understood in its historical context. This is because it views literary texts as cultural products that are rooted in their time and place, not works of individual genius that transcend them. New-historicist essays are thus often marked by making seemingly unlikely linkages between various cultural products and literary texts. Its “newness” is at once an echo of the New Criticism it replaced and a recognition of an “old” historicism, often exemplified by E. M. W. Tillyard, against which it defines itself. In its earliest iteration, new historicism was primarily a method of power analysis strongly influenced by the anthropological studies of Clifford Geertz, modes of torture and punishment described by Michel Foucault, and methods of ideological control outlined by Louis Althusser. This can be seen most visibly in new-historicist work of the early 1980s. These works came to view the Tudor and early Stuart states as being almost insurmountable absolutist monarchies in which the scope of individual agency or political subversion appeared remote. This version of new historicism is frequently, and erroneously, taken to represent its entire enterprise. Stephen Greenblatt argued that power often produces its own subversive elements in order to contain it—and so what appears to be subversion is actually the final victory of containment. This became known as the hard version of the containment thesis, and it was attacked and critiqued by many commentators as leaving too-little room for the possibility of real change or agency. This was the major departure point of the cultural materialists, who sought a more dynamic model of culture that afforded greater opportunities for dissidence. Later new-historicist studies sought to complicate the hard version of the containment thesis to facilitate a more flexible, heterogeneous, and dynamic view of culture.

Owing to its success, there has been no shortage of textbooks and anthology entries on new historicism, but it has often had to share space with British cultural materialism, a school that, though related, has an entirely distinct theoretical and methodological genesis. The consequence of this dual treatment has resulted in a somewhat caricatured view of both approaches along the axis of subversion and containment, with new historicism representing the latter. While there is some truth to this shorthand account, any sustained engagement with new-historicist studies will reveal its limitations. Readers should be aware, therefore, that while accounts that contrast new historicism with cultural materialism—for example, Dollimore 1990 , Wilson 1992 , and Brannigan 1998 —can be illuminating, they can also by the terms of that contrast tend to oversimplify. Be aware also that because new historicism has been a controversial development in the field, accounts are seldom entirely neutral. Mullaney 1996 , for example, was written by a new historicist, while Parvini 2012 was written by an author who has been strongly critical of the approach.

Brannigan, John. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism . Transitions. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-26622-7

Introduction to new historicism and cultural materialism aimed at the general reader and student, which does much to elucidate the differences between those two schools. In doing so, however, it is perhaps guilty of oversimplification, especially as regards the new historicists, who, according to Brannigan, never progress beyond the hard version of the containment thesis.

Dollimore, Jonathan. “Critical Developments: Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Gender Critique, and New Historicism.” In Shakespeare: A Bibliographical Guide . New ed. Edited by Stanley Wells, 405–428. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

A cultural-materialist take on “critical developments” over the decade of the 1980s that elaborates on the differences between new historicism and cultural materialism. Useful document of its time, but be aware of identifying new historicists too closely with the containment thesis it outlines, which became softer and more nuanced in later new-historicist work.

Hamilton, Paul. Historicism . New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge, 1996.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203426289

Guide to wider tradition of historicism from ancient Greece to the late 20th century. Chapters on Michel Foucault and new historicism usefully view both subjects through this wider lens, although some of the nuances (for example, the differences between new historicism and cultural materialism) are lost along the way. See especially pp. 115–150.

Harris, Jonathan Gil. “New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, Alan Sinfield.” In Shakespeare and Literary Theory . By Jonathan Gil Harris, 175–192. Oxford Shakespeare Topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Structured into three parts: the first on Foucault, the second on Greenblatt’s “Invisible Bullets” (see Greenblatt 1988 , cited under Essays ), and the third on the cultural materialist Sinfield. Concise, if cursory, overview. Its focus on practice rather than theory renders it too specific to serve as a lone entry point, but useful introductory material if considered alongside other accounts.

Mullaney, Steven. “After the New Historicism.” In Alternative Shakespeares . Vol. 2. Edited by Terence Hawkes, 17–37. New Accents. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

By its own admission a “partisan account” (p. 21) of new-historicist practice by one of its own foremost practitioners. Argues that the view of new historicism become distorted through oversimplification. Reminds us of the extent of new historicism’s theoretical and methodological innovations, which detractors “sometimes fail to acknowledge” (p. 28).

Parvini, Neema. Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory: New Historicism and Cultural Materialism . New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2012.

DOI: 10.5040/9781472555113

More comprehensive in coverage than other available guides, perhaps owing to its more recent publication. Features a timeline of critical developments, a “Who’s Who” in new historicism and cultural materialism, and a glossary of theoretical terms. Includes sections on Clifford Geertz and Michel Foucault and offers clear distinctions between early new-historicist work and “cultural poetics.”

Robson, Mark. Stephen Greenblatt . Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York and London: Routledge, 2007.

Although centered on Greenblatt, this book effectively doubles as an introduction to new historicism and its concepts. Lucidly written, it features some incisive analysis and a comprehensive reading list to direct further study.

Wilson, Richard. “Introduction: Historicising New Historicism.” In New Historicism and Renaissance Drama . Edited by Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton, 1–18. Longman Critical Readers. New York and London: Longman, 1992.

Gains from being very theoretically well informed. Argues that new historicism is best understood, ironically, if historicized in the context of Ronald Reagan’s America and the final years of the Cold War. An excellent entry point to understanding new historicism and its concerns. A section contrasting cultural materialism with new historicism closes the piece.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Literary and Critical Theory »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Achebe, Chinua
• Adorno, Theodor
• Aesthetics, Post-Soul
• Affect Studies
• Afrofuturism
• Agamben, Giorgio
• Anzaldúa, Gloria E.
• Apel, Karl-Otto
• Appadurai, Arjun
• Badiou, Alain
• Baudrillard, Jean
• Belsey, Catherine
• Benjamin, Walter
• Bettelheim, Bruno
• Bhabha, Homi K.
• Biopower, Biopolitics and
• Blanchot, Maurice
• Bloom, Harold
• Bourdieu, Pierre
• Brecht, Bertolt
• Brooks, Cleanth
• Caputo, John D.
• Chakrabarty, Dipesh
• Conversation Analysis
• Cosmopolitanism
• Creolization/Créolité
• Crip Theory
• Critical Theory
• Cultural Materialism
• de Certeau, Michel
• de Man, Paul
• de Saussure, Ferdinand
• Deconstruction
• Deleuze, Gilles
• Derrida, Jacques
• Dollimore, Jonathan
• Du Bois, W.E.B.
• Eagleton, Terry
• Eco, Umberto
• Ecocriticism
• English Colonial Discourse and India
• Environmental Ethics
• Fanon, Frantz
• Feminism, Transnational
• Foucault, Michel
• Frankfurt School
• Freud, Sigmund
• Frye, Northrop
• Genet, Jean
• Girard, René
• Global South
• Goldberg, Jonathan
• Gramsci, Antonio
• Greimas, Algirdas Julien
• Grief and Comparative Literature
• Guattari, Félix
• Habermas, Jürgen
• Haraway, Donna J.
• Hartman, Geoffrey
• Hawkes, Terence
• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
• Hemispheric Studies
• Hermeneutics
• Hillis-Miller, J.
• Holocaust Literature
• Human Rights and Literature
• Humanitarian Fiction
• Hutcheon, Linda
• Žižek, Slavoj
• Imperial Masculinity
• Irigaray, Luce
• Jameson, Fredric
• JanMohamed, Abdul R.
• Johnson, Barbara
• Kagame, Alexis
• Kolodny, Annette
• Kristeva, Julia
• Lacan, Jacques
• Laclau, Ernesto
• Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe
• Laplanche, Jean
• Leavis, F. R.
• Levinas, Emmanuel
• Levi-Strauss, Claude
• Literature, Dalit
• Lonergan, Bernard
• Lotman, Jurij
• Lukács, Georg
• Lyotard, Jean-François
• Metz, Christian
• Morrison, Toni
• Mouffe, Chantal
• Nancy, Jean-Luc
• Neo-Slave Narratives
• New Historicism
• New Materialism
• Partition Literature
• Peirce, Charles Sanders
• Philosophy of Theater, The
• Postcolonial Theory
• Posthumanism
• Postmodernism
• Post-Structuralism
• Psychoanalytic Theory
• Queer Medieval
• Queer Theory
• Race and Disability
• Rancière, Jacques
• Ransom, John Crowe
• Reader Response Theory
• Rich, Adrienne
• Richards, I. A.
• Ronell, Avital
• Rosenblatt, Louse
• Said, Edward
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich
• Settler Colonialism
• Socialist/Marxist Feminism
• Stiegler, Bernard
• Structuralism
• Theatre of the Absurd
• Thing Theory
• Tolstoy, Leo
• Tomashevsky, Boris
• Translation
• Transnationalism in Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies
• Virilio, Paul
• Warren, Robert Penn
• White, Hayden
• Wittig, Monique
• World Literature
• Zimmerman, Bonnie
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [185.148.24.167]
• 185.148.24.167

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › New Historicism: A Brief Note

New Historicism: A Brief Note

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 16, 2016 • ( 14 )

A critical approach developed in the 1980s in the writings of Stephen Greenblatt , New Historicism is characterised by a parallel reading of a text with its socio-cultural and historical conditions, which form the co-text. New Historians rejected the fundamental tenets of New Criticism (that the text is an autotelic artefact), and Liberal Humanism (that the text has timeless significance and universal value) . On the contrary, New Historicism, as Louis Montrose suggested, deals with the “texuality of history and the historicity of texts.” Textuality of history refers to the idea that history is constructed and fictionalised, and the historicity of text refers to its inevitable embedment within the socio-political conditions of its production and interpretation. Though it rejects many of the assumptions of poststructuralism, New Historicism is in a way poststructuralist in that it rejects the essential idea of a common human nature that is shared by the author, characters and readers; instead it believes that identity is plural and hybrid.

A New Historicist interpretation of a text begins with identifying the literary and non-literary texts available and accessible to the public, at the time of its production, followed by reading and interpreting the text in the light of its co-text. Such an interpretative analysis would ideally begin with a powerful and dramatic explication of the “anecdote”, which is the historical context or the co-text. Thus the text and the context are perceived as expressions of the same historical moment. Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) does a New Historicist reading of Renaissance plays, reavealing how ‘self-fashioning was an episteme of the era, as depicted in the portraits and literature  of the time.

The discipline of New Historicism has been influenced by Althusserian concept of ideology; the Derridian deconstructionist idea that a text is at war with itself; Bhaktinian dialogism which posits that a text contains a multiplicity of conflicting voices; and most prominently by Foucauldian Power/Knowledge and discourse. Analysing the nature of  power, Foucault  expounds that Power (for instance, in the form of the panoptic surveillant sate), defines what is truth, knowledge, normalcy. New Historicism believes in the Foucauldian idea of the “capillary modes of power” which like Althusser’s Ideology interpellates the lives and actions of the citizens.

Foucault’s archeological concept of history as archive, informs yet another tendency of the New Historicists, in that they consider history as fictionalised and as a “co-text” while traditional historians consider history as facts and as the background to the text, which is the foreground. Foucault observes that history is characterised by gaps and fissures contemporary historicists highlight the discontinuities and conflicts of history, rather than write in a coherent manner. He does not, like traditional historians, write history as a unified, continuous story.

Thus New Historicism applies the poststructuralist idea that reality is constructed and multiple, and the Foucauldian idea of the role of power in creating knowledge.

Share this:

Categories: Literature

Tags: Linguistics , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , New Historicism , Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare , Stephen Greenblatt

Related Articles

I found the article decent. But, I would be very glad if I got an example of any literary work explaining with New Historicism.

Thank you very much for this article. This is very comprehensive and enlightening! I’m now currently my undergraduate thesis in Literature using this approach. Thank you so much!

Hi Sayong Thanks a lot for your feedback. Feel free to browse through 333 articles at http://www.literariness.org . You may ask for any assistance related to finish your project. Keep reading

What is the relationship between literature and history? Is literature historical? Is history literature?

I read through this article and found it useful and inciting. I wish to use extract from it in a paper I am writing.I wish to ask about how I can cite it.

my e-mail is : [email protected]

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “New Historicism.” http://Www.literariness.org , 16 Oct. 2016, literariness.org/2016/10/16/new-historicism/.

I would like to have a starter or better still, orientation on reading Joyce’s A Portrate of the Artist As a Young Man with the optic of New Historicism. Although I found the above article interesting, I found it a little complicated to project it on the text

Thanks for this very educative and well explained piece. can you please educate me on the various strands of new historicism and their poetics? thank you.

• The Textuality of History and the Historicity of Texts – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• New Historicism’s Deviation from Old Historicism – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• Foucault’s Influence on New Historicism – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• New Historicism and Cultural Materialism – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• Stephen Greenblatt and New Historicism – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• Literary Criticism of George Puttenham – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

After History: Textuality and Historicity in the New Historicism

Cite this chapter.

• John Brannigan  

Part of the book series: Transitions ((TRANSs))

530 Accesses

When Stephen Greenblatt announced the arrival of the new historicism in 1982, he defined it as a practice which was ‘set apart from both the dominant historical scholarship of the past and the formalist criticism that partially displaced this scholarship in the decades after World War Two’ (Greenblatt 1982, 5). New historicism represented (itself as) a significant shift away from the kind of literary studies wherein the literary text was conceived to be an ahistorical linguistic structure, or the literary text was measured against a crude historical background. Along with some Marxist and feminist critics, and cultural materialism in Britain, the new historicism came to be known as the turn to history in literary studies. In his presidential address to the Modern Language Association in 1986, Hillis Miller claimed that the turn to history was dominating literary studies:

As everybody knows, literary study in the past few years has undergone a sudden, almost universal turn away from theory in the sense of an orientation toward language as such and has made a corresponding turn toward history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender conditions, the social context, the material base in the sense of institutionalization, conditions of production, technology, distribution, and consumption of ‘cultural products’, among other products. This trend is so obvious everywhere as hardly to need description. How many symposia, conferences, scholarly convention sessions, courses, books and new journals recently have had the word history, politics, society or culture in their titles? (Miller 1991, 313)

I began with the desire to speak with the dead.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 1998 John Brannigan

About this chapter

Brannigan, J. (1998). After History: Textuality and Historicity in the New Historicism. In: New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. Transitions. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26622-7_11

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26622-7_11

Publisher Name : Palgrave, London

Print ISBN : 978-0-333-68781-9

Online ISBN : 978-1-349-26622-7

eBook Packages : Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Encyclopedia

Writing with artificial intelligence, new historicist criticism.

• © 2024 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

New Historicist Criticism is

• a research method , a type of textual research , that literary critics use to interpret texts
• a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts.

Key Terms: Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Semiotics ; Text & Intertextuality ; Tone

American critic Stephen Greenblatt coined the term “New Historicism” (5) in the Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance (1982). New Historicism, or Cultural Materialism, considers a literary work within the context of the author’s historical milieu. A key premise of New Historicism is that art and literature are integrated into the material practices of culture. Consequently, literary and non-literary texts circulate together in society. Analyzing a text alongside its historical milieu and relevant documents can demonstrate how a text addresses the social or political concerns of its time period.

New Historicism, or Cultural Materialism, considers a literary work within the context of the author’s historical milieu. A key premise of New Historicism is that art and literature are integrated into the material practices of culture; consequently, literary and non-literary texts circulate together in society. New Historicism may focus on the life of the author; the social, economic, and political circumstances (and non-literary works) of that era; as well as the cultural events of the author’s historical milieu. The cultural events with which a work correlates may be big (social and cultural) or small. Scholars view Raymond Williams as a major figure in the development of Cultural Materialism. American critic Stephen Greenblatt coined the term “New Historicism” (5) in the Introduction of one of his collections of essays about English Renaissance Drama, The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance . Many New Historicist critics have studied Shakespeare’s The Tempest alongside The Bermuda Pamphlets and various travel narratives from the early modern era, speculating about how England’s colonial expeditions in the New World may have influenced Shakespeare’s decision to set The Tempest on an island near Bermuda. Some critics also situate The Tempest during the period of time during in which King James I ruled England and advocated the absolute authority of Kings in both political and spiritual matters. Since Prospero maintains complete authority on the island on which The Tempest is set, some New Historicist critics find a parallel between King James I and Prospero in The Tempest . Additionally, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe can be interpreted in light of the true story of a shipwrecked man named Alexander Selkirk. Analyzing a text alongside its historical milieu and relevant documents can demonstrate how a text addresses the social or political concerns of its time period.

Foundational Questions of New Historicist Criticism

• Does the text address the political or social concerns of its time period? If so, what issues does the text examine? 
• What historical events or controversies does the text overtly address or allude to? Does the text comment on those events?
• What types of historical documents (e.g., wills, laws, religious tracts, narratives, art, etc.) might illuminate the meaning and the purpose of the literary text?
• How does the text relate to other literary texts of the same time period?

Online Example: Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”: A New Historicist Reading

Discussion Questions and Activities: New Historical/Cultural Materialist Criticism

• Identify and define key words that you would consider when approaching a text from a new historical/cultural materialist position.
• Discuss the significance of the fact that art and literature are integrated into the material practices of culture.
• Employ a New Historicist approach to demonstrate how a specific literary text addresses a social topic of its historical milieu.
• Using the Folger Digital Texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library , examine act one, scene two, lines 385-450 of The Tempest . What political concerns, social controversies, or historical events of this time period do you think The Tempest treats?
• What research would you conduct to argue whether or not The Tempest addresses either slavery or colonialism? Support your viewpoint with a few examples of sources that you would explore and include in a research paper about the topic.

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Recommended

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Structured Revision – How to Revise Your Work

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Research, Speech & Writing

Citation Guide – Learn How to Cite Sources in Academic and Professional Writing

Page Design – How to Design Messages for Maximum Impact

Suggested edits.

• Please select the purpose of your message. * - Corrections, Typos, or Edits Technical Support/Problems using the site Advertising with Writing Commons Copyright Issues I am contacting you about something else
• Your full name
• Your email address *
• Page URL needing edits *
• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Other Topics:

Citation - Definition - Introduction to Citation in Academic & Professional Writing

• Joseph M. Moxley

Explore the different ways to cite sources in academic and professional writing, including in-text (Parenthetical), numerical, and note citations.

Collaboration - What is the Role of Collaboration in Academic & Professional Writing?

Collaboration refers to the act of working with others or AI to solve problems, coauthor texts, and develop products and services. Collaboration is a highly prized workplace competency in academic...

Genre may reference a type of writing, art, or musical composition; socially-agreed upon expectations about how writers and speakers should respond to particular rhetorical situations; the cultural values; the epistemological assumptions...

Grammar refers to the rules that inform how people and discourse communities use language (e.g., written or spoken English, body language, or visual language) to communicate. Learn about the rhetorical...

Information Literacy - Discerning Quality Information from Noise

Information Literacy refers to the competencies associated with locating, evaluating, using, and archiving information. In order to thrive, much less survive in a global information economy — an economy where information functions as a...

Mindset refers to a person or community’s way of feeling, thinking, and acting about a topic. The mindsets you hold, consciously or subconsciously, shape how you feel, think, and act–and...

Rhetoric: Exploring Its Definition and Impact on Modern Communication

Learn about rhetoric and rhetorical practices (e.g., rhetorical analysis, rhetorical reasoning,  rhetorical situation, and rhetorical stance) so that you can strategically manage how you compose and subsequently produce a text...

Style, most simply, refers to how you say something as opposed to what you say. The style of your writing matters because audiences are unlikely to read your work or...

The Writing Process - Research on Composing

The writing process refers to everything you do in order to complete a writing project. Over the last six decades, researchers have studied and theorized about how writers go about...

Writing Studies

Writing studies refers to an interdisciplinary community of scholars and researchers who study writing. Writing studies also refers to an academic, interdisciplinary discipline – a subject of study. Students in...

Featured Articles

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

A Conversation with the Living: Louis Montrose and the New Historicism

Related Papers

jasmine saini

matter on new historicism.

yasser iqbal

The Johns Hopkins Guide to …

Bryce Traister

Juergen R Meyer

New Historicism has alerted critics to the complex conditions of literary production in the age of the printing press. The revisionist challenge presented by Jerome J. McGann to the concept of " the " writer as autonomous authority in the publication of a text has necessitated adjustments in the fields of textual scholarship and editing since the early 1980s. The present article delineates the theoretical parallels between New Historicism as a revisionist critical paradigm and “New Textualism” as its bibliographical counterpart. These approaches are distinguished from the purely analytic, noninterpretive idealistic premises of the earlier textual scholarship known as “New Bibliography.” New Textualist scholars have shifted attention from a disputable end product (an author’s “work”) to the genetic details in a range of material text witnesses, highlighting their dynamic “fluidity” and their “contamination” by social agents involved in the production process of the text, including typists, publishers, and editors. However, a few aspects of New Textualism create methodological aporias and produce, in extremo, a virtually unreadable compilation of parallel texts. Using some previously developed categories, this article offers an interpretive textual Analysis together with a genetic narrative of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). It demonstrates the extent of text variation caused by agents other than the author and in so doing presents evidence of a highly interactive textual practice in early modern publishing.

International Journal for Social Studies

GIDEON Uzoma Umezurike

This research is based on the exploration of Tade Ipadeola's The Sahara Testaments using new historicism. Since new historicism, as a literary theory, views literature from a historical and cultural contexts, it is a viable tool that sheds light on The Sahara Testaments as a surge into the historical past of the world—a quest to retell the story of the black race, a race whose history the world seems eager to forget, has under-taught; and whose present status is, as a result, undervalued. This project, therefore, dwells on the economic and social importance of the black race in the long course of history, as revealed in the primary text under study. What Ipadeola does in The Sahara Testaments is more than a description of the flora and fauna of the Sahara. He uses the Sahara as a metonymy, or if you like a synecdoche, for the whole of Africa, as he delves into recreating and reposition the true image and history of Africa which Europe and the rest of the West has bastardized in their supremacist quest for power and economic wealth. Ipadeola's a negrophilic invocation of history is clearly seen in poems such as " Our Hands, " " Sahara Sighs, " " A Great One, " and many others. In these poems, the persona expresses love for Africa as he recounts pre-colonial history, showing the relevance of the black race to the rest of the world.

Anita Singh

Theory and Praxis: Indian and Western Edited by R.N. Rai, M.S. Pandey and Anita Singh This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by R.N. Rai, M.S. Pandey, Anita Singh and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7123-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7123-5 CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 R.N. Rai Chapter One............................................................................................... 24 Reader Response Theory and the Concept of Sahrdaya G.B. Mohan Thampi Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 35 Psychoanalytical Frameworks in the Utopian Impulse Daniel T Baker Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 42 The Nation as Goddess: Ritualizing Politics, Politicizing the Sacral Namrata R. Mahanta and Banibrata Mahanta Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 53 Postcolonialism and Strategies of Narration in India Awanish Rai Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 61 Contemporary Theory in the Postcolonial Third World Jai Singh Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 71 Locating Edward Said’s Politics of Liberation in Orientalism Ravi Kumar Kumbar Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 80 Suppressed Histories, Racial Conflicts and Postcolonial Disorder in A Bend in the River Prakash Chandra Pradhan vi Contents Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 104 Rescripting the Dominant, Essentialist Narrative on the Splitting of India: Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man Nupur Palit Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 110 Bhagvadgita: A New Interpretation Damodar Thakur Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 123 Androgyny and Postfeminism: Revisiting D. H. Lawrence Devender Kumar Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 140 Ecology and Feminism in India in Linda Hogan’s Power: An Ecofeminist Perspective R.D. Gholap Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 150 Exploring Animal Ethics in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of the Animals: A General Semantic Approach Dhriti Ray Dalai Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 160 Discourse of Otherness: Minority and Subaltern Perspectives in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance Chitra Trivikraman Nair Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 171 Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja: A Subaltern Study Bhagabat Nayak Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 189 Re-reading Ramayana: Exploring Sita in Sita Sings the Blues Aarttee Kaul Dhar Contributors............................................................................................. 200 About the Editors..................................................................................... 202

anita nur azizah

Jennifer Rich

Literature Compass

W. Scott Howard

This essay has four interconnected goals: 1) to reflect upon some of the major theoretical and methodological developments (since about 1950) in the fields of early modern literary studies and history vis-à-vis the question of historicism; 2) to address, within the context of seventeenth-century England, inter-relationships between poetics and historiography; 3) to examine that “interdisciplinarity” specifically in terms of the seventeenth-century English poetic elegy; and 4) to trace (from Plato to Puttenham) and to argue for a specific theoretical aspect of that inter-relationship, which I will call historical figuration. My argument will hinge upon these connecting points, especially the latter two. On the one hand, I will argue that an early modern paradigm shift from theocentric to increasingly secular narrative frameworks for personal and national histories contributes to a transformation in poetic genre. English poets began to formulate a new intra-textual crisis of linguistic signification within the elegy's construction of loss and spiritual consolation as the experience of death and mourning became less theocentric and communal and more secular and individualized during the seventeenth century. This new intra-textuality to elegiac resistance emerges gradually but consistently from approximately the 1620s onward, facilitating the genre's new articulations of consolation situated within and against historical contexts rather than projected toward a transcendental horizon. On the other hand, I will also argue that this distinctive inter-relationship between poetics and historiography may be theorized as historical figuration, which may be linked directly to key contributions to the history of poetic theory from Plato to Puttenham. My two-fold thesis thus attempts to engender and engage what some may see as a trans-discursive poetics of culture. However, I would hesitate to place my argument within the new-historicist camp, but would hope instead that this essay may contribute to the emerging, interdisciplinary sub-field of new genre studies, which seeks to examine literary genres as manifestations of aesthetic forms and social discourses.

Chip Dobbs-Allsopp

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Petru Golban

Petru Golban , Estella Ciobanu

John Jeffries Martin

pavendan balaq

David Schalkwyk

Gökçen Uzunköprü

Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary …

SEDERI Yearbook

Vinh Quoc Nguyen

Francisca Armijo

Lauren Goodlad

James Sosnoski

Chila Manilhig

Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches, ed. Fein and Raybin

Steven Justice

Haytham Kawash

Alex Shalom Kohav

History and Theory

Jürgen Pieters

fouzia akram

Mary Maasoumi

Oana Celia Gheorghiu

Textual Practice

J.B. Lethbridge

Albert Rolls

farzaneh hajishafiee

Christophe Den Tandt

Muhammad Hasyim

Fons Luminis: A Journal of Medieval Studies; http://fonsluminis.utoronto.ca/

Anna Wilson

Ari Friedlander

ASIER ALTUNA GARCIA DE SALAZAR

Carla Mazzio

Ivo Nieuwenhuis

Shaul Magid

Marketing Theory

Pauline Maclaran

Prayer Elmo Raj

wassila Rouabah , Linda Tint

Zosia Czaplewska

American Studies as Media Studies

Daniel Stein

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

26 Student Example Essay: New Historicism

The following student essay example of New Historicism is taken from Beginnings and Endings: A Critical Edition .  This is the publication created by students in English 211. This essay discusses Lorrie Moore’s short story, “Terrific Mother.”

When Women Were Never Enough: A New Historical Perspective on Lorrie Moore’s “Terrific Mother”

by Tania Agurto

Motherhood has been a source of discord in recent decades for being a concept that is exclusively associated with women, and it turns out to be for some people or societies a kind of meter that helps to pigeonhole women or rank them depending on whether they have decided or managed to be mothers. Lorrie Moore’s “Terrific Mother” presents us this reality through Adrienne, a woman in her mid-thirties, single, childless, which due to her personal circumstances receives compliments such as, “You would make a terrific mother” (Moore 3). Adrienne attends a gathering of friends and by accident, her friend’s baby she holds falls along with her when the picnic bench toppled on her, and sadly the baby dies, which leads her to make decisions such as seclusion for months and later marriage, as an escape route from her pain and guilt. This is how Adrianne, despite being a woman who breaks with the socially established canons, cannot get out of the vicious circle established for women in those years.

Through the lens of New Historical Criticism, we can appreciate the external influences that shape Moore’s work and at the same time understand the reality experienced by women in the late 1990s. At the end of the nineties the world was already seeing a change concerning the established social model; this could be appreciated in the delay in the age of marriage and childbirth due to prioritizing the pursuit of a professional career, the joining of women to the workforce or simply seeking independence without the need for marriage. These changes were reflected in the increase in the average age of women at the time of marriage, which had risen from 20 – 22 years in the early nineties to 25 years at the end of 1997 (Yarrow). This is how the author manages to bring to the fore the important social events that were happening worldwide through Adrienne, a single and independent woman. Regarding that, Karen Weekes declares that “protagonists in Moore’s short stories cycles are constantly exploring and pushing against the social boundaries that they and others have established” (3).

A characteristic of the social change of the nineties is the recognition and the requirement of women as a multifaceted beings; however, in Text and Contexts Steven Lynn acknowledges that having equal opportunities is good, but it is not fair when the woman is responsible for taking those opportunities while taking care of everything else (223). Weekes also refers to this and points out that “females’ identities are continually formed and reformed, allowing women to fluctuate between stages of development in response to the sociological demands of relationships and maternal nurturing.” However, we can see to this day that, even though things have become the same through the years, the demand has always been greater for women or the reward for the opportunity has been uneven.

Although we know that the historical context will shape the result whatever the work, the author’s background will also do it. Steven Lynn points out “We can hardly understand one person’s life without some sense of the time and place in which he or she lived, and we can hardly understand human history without trying to think about the individual humans who made it” (148). As part of Moore’s life story, she comments that as a child she was very thin and that made her feel fearful of her environment; she even shared that she was afraid to walk over the grates. Once she became an adult that was not an exception since Moore, like Adrianne, broke with the established pattern, but she continued with his fearful personality. Don Lee comments that “her expectations for herself were modest. Entering St. Lawrence, she hadn’t been exactly bursting with ambition.” Later Moore adds, “ I think I probably went to college to fall in love” (“About Lorrie Moore”). The influence of her environment and pre-established social patterns have likely helped her to feel that way concerning her personal abilities and expectations. How did this fearful girl become the successful writer of “Terrific Mother”? It is probably her personality that has helped in a great way since this influences her way of writing which is detailed as follows: “Many of her stories are fairly traditional in structure, but there is always that quickness of movement, that slightly skewed narrative perspective that keeps you alert and a little uneasy —she could pull something anytime, and you don’t want to miss it” (Unlikely Stories). Moore herself catalogs her life as “conventional” and that is what makes her strangely close in her way of writing.

However, despite not feeling too trained or not being completely sure of the path she wanted to follow professionally, she broke all standards and has even been highlighted as one of the best authors of American short stories.  In an article that talks about the rebirth of American short stories Vince Passaro declares, “When volumes like those from Lorrie Moore …a new kind of work stepped out onto the American literary landscape, more psychologically rich and confrontational than that of the minimalists” (“Unlikely Stones”).

The time period in which the story was written tells us a lot about important social changes concerning the visualization of women as defiant beings of the unilaterally established rules. In the late 1990s, it was the Post Feminist movement that was gaining momentum; however, it seems that Adrienne remains to live only First Wave Feminism, since it only leaves the parameter of breaking the scheme, but does not advance further.

The foregoing is explained in her decision to marry Martin, who offers her the option to accompany him to his academic retreat in northern Italy, then in this way “she could be a spouse” (Moore 4). The emotional situation that Adrienne experiences does not allow her to see further and she thinks that this decision will allow her to resume her life; to try to live again because she “is a bushwoman now” (Moore 4). As a consequence of this decision, Adrienne becomes emotionally subjugated to Martin, which makes her dependent on him emotionally and does not help her with her previous mental-emotional situation.

“Terrific Mother” is a complex story in which Lorrie Moore takes us along surprising paths and we can see how the historical context influences the development of this work; however, it should be mentioned that Moore’s background also affects the setting of the stage in this story. Just as she admits to leading a very conventional life, she also leads Adrienne to try to follow the same path, because “Marriage it’s an institution”, which means that at this time in a historical-social environment, surpassed currents of equality, equity, and liberation.

Works Cited

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

Follow Marymount Manhattan

Admitted Students – Make Your Deposit Today!

Congratulations to all our Fall 2024 admitted students! We can’t wait to welcome you to NYC this fall. Be sure to make your deposit today to secure your spot.

SENIOR THESIS and BFA ART EXHIBITION 2023

This group exhibition features the work of nine practice-based art majors who each developed a body of work in their Senior Art Seminar class under the guidance and mentorship of Professor Beth Shipley. The show presents a broad range of capstone projects that engage the mediums of digital illustration, painting, animation, photography and mixed media. The work interrogates questions of identity in gender, religion, and culture. Personal histories are explored through self-portraiture and visual narratives. The breadth and scope of media and styles attest to the diversity of approaches and the unique visions that are the hallmark of the art program at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition, this year we had our inaugural BFA solo exhibition, Picture Me Better, by Audrey Bresler. The independent study was done with Professor Shipley. Mixing 35mm and digital photography, Bresler created enhanced matte inkjet prints in a series of six themes exploring her fascination with girlhood.

Exhibition dates: December 11, 2023 - February 20, 2024

hewitt Hewitt Gallery of Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Art opening Senior Art Exhibiron Art BFA Art BA

Progress Towards an Expedient Synthesis of the Core of Dihydro-β-agarofuran Natural Products

Dihydro-β-agarofurans are a class of polyester sesquiterpene secondary metabolites isolated from the Celastraceae plant family. Many compounds in this class have demonstrated biological activity and have therefore generated much synthetic interest. However, their trans -decalin/tetrahydrofuranyl ring system and high levels of oxidation make them synthetically challenging. The first chapter presents a discussion on the biological activity and various historical methods used to construct this ring system. The second chapter describes the new dearomative oxidation/cyclization method developed by our group to rapidly synthesize the tricyclic ring system in only 9 steps from commercially available 6-methoxy-1-tetralone. Other key steps include a MHAT reduction of a b,b-disubstituted dienone, stereospecific reduction of an enone, and hydroxyl-directed Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation. The large-scale synthesis of these advanced synthetic intermediates and the attempted elaboration to the dihydro-β-agarofuran core is described in detail.

Degree Type

• Master of Science

Campus location

• West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, usage metrics.

• Organic chemistry not elsewhere classified