A

PROJECT
ON
English literature

Submitted as a partial fulfilment of the requirements

for
B.A. LL.B (HONS) 5 Year Integrated Course

Session: 2019-2020

Submitted On: 09th August, 2019

Submitted By: Submitted to:

AVANI LEKHARA Dr. PRIYANKA KHETAN
Roll no-18
Semester -1 Section -A
 Declaration

I, Avani Lekhara, hereby declare that this project titled

"New Historicism” is based on the original research work carried out by me
under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Priyanka Khetan.

The interpretations put forth are based on my reading and understanding

of the original texts. The books, articles and websites etc. which have been
relied upon by me have been duly acknowledged at the respective places in the
text.

For the present project which I am submitting to the university, no degree

or diploma has been conferred on me before, either in this or in any other
university.

Date: 09th August, 2019 (Avani Lekhara)

Roll No.18
Semester 1A
 Certificate

Dr. Priyanka Khetan Date: 09thAugust, 2019

Assistant Professor
University five year law college,
University of Rajasthan, Jaipur

This is to certify that Avani Lekhara student of semester 1.Section A of

University Five Year Law College, University of Rajasthan has carried out
project tittle "New Historicism” under my supervision. It is an investigation of
a minor research project. The student has completed research work in stipulated
time and according to norms prescribed for the purpose.

Supervisor
 Acknowledgment

I have written this project titled, "New Historicism” under the

supervision of Dr. Priyanka Khetan Faculty, University Five Year Law
College, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. His valuable suggestions herein have
not only helped me immensely in making this work but also in developing an
analytical approach this work.

I found no words to express my sense of gratitude for Director Dr.

Sanjula Thanvi, and Dy. Director Mr. Manoj Meena and Mr. Abhishek Tiwari
constant encouragement at every step.

I am extremely grateful to librarian and library staff of the college for the
support and cooperation extended by them from time to time.

Avani Lekhara
 Table of content

 Declaration
 Certificate
 Acknowledgment
 Chapter 1
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Background
1.3 Historicism
1.4 New History
1.5 Foucault and Lacan
1.6 The study
1.7 Affinities
1.8 Criticism

 Chapter 2
Looking at “Macbeth” through a New Historicism critical
perspective

 Chapter 3
Conclusion

 Bibliography
 Chapter 1
New Historicism

1.1 Introduction
New Historicism is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the
premise that a literary work should be considered a product of the time, place, and historical
circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated work of art or text. It has its roots
in a reaction to the "New Criticism" of formal analysis of works of literature, which was seen
by a new generation of professional critics as ignoring the greater social and political
consequences of the production of literary texts. New Historicism developed in the 1980s,
primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, gaining widespread influence in
the 1990s and beyond.
New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical
context and to understand cultural as well as to investigate the intellectual history and cultural
history through literature. The approach owes much of its impetus to the work of Michel
Foucault, who based his approach both on his theory of the limits of collective cultural
knowledge and on his technique of examining a broad array of documents in order to
understand the episteme of a particular time. Using Foucault's work as a starting point, New
Historicism aims at interpreting a literary text as an expression of or reaction to the power-
structures of the surrounding society.
New Historicism attempted to reintroduce the concept of history into literary studies,
in part as a corrective to the ahistorical and apolitical nature of much of Post-structuralism.
However, in adopting the Foucauldian notion of epistemic rupture between ages and
civilizations, which makes understanding the text in the terms in which it was produced
impossible, New Historicism has been criticized for reducing the importance of literature as a
work of art and turning it into just another historical artifact.

1.2 Background
New Historicism arose in the late twentieth century as a result to the ahistorical
hermeneutics of much of structuralism and post-structuralism. The label of "New
Historicism" came from it adoption of a Historicist sensibility, much as had occurred within
historical scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but coupled with the
approach of the so-called "New History."

1.3 Historicism
Historicism holds that all knowledge and cognition are historically conditioned. It is
also widely used in diverse disciplines to designate an approach from a historical perspective.
Historicism appeared in Europe, primarily in Germany; it challenged the progressive view of
history that interpreted history as a linear, uniform process that operated according to
universal laws, a view widely held by thinkers from the Enlightenment era forward.
Historicism stressed the unique diversity of historical contexts and stressed the importance of
developing specific methods and theories appropriate to each unique historical context.
Historicism also often challenged the concept of truth and the notion of rationality in
modernity. Modern thinkers held that reason was a universal faculty of the mind that is free
of interpretation, that can grasp universal and unchanging truth. Historicism questioned this
notion of rationality and truth, and argued for the historical context of knowledge and reason;
historicism is an explicit formulation of the historicity of knowledge. The earlier formulation
of historicism was made by Vico (1668-1744) and Herder (1744–1803).
Vico criticized the concept that truth transcends history and argued that truth is
conditioned by human history. Herder rejected central ideas of the Enlightenment, such as the
concept of universal rationality, and belief in the progress of human history according to the
development of reason. These ideas of the Enlightenment were built upon the presuppositions
that there was only one kind of rationality applicable to all people and cultures and that
human history is a linear process of progress whose pattern of development was the same for
all. Herder, a leading advocate of Romanticism, argued that each historical period and culture
contains a unique value system, and he conceived history as the aggregate of diverse, unique
histories. Herder stressed the importance of understanding the unique context of each
historical period in order to make an authentic interpretation of the past.
Major nineteenth century historical theorists include Leopold von Ranke (1795–
1886), Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1884), and Friedrich Meinecke (1862–1954). They
responded to the rise of Hegelianism as the final and most well-developed Idealist and
speculative interpretation of history, the culmination of the Enlightenment view of history as
the history of reason. They argued that there were diverse and unique characteristics to each
region and people, which were irreducible to abstract uniform patterns based upon abstract
speculative ideas in philosophy. Ranke, for example, approached history based upon a critical
examination of primary documents and sources as opposed to Hegel’s speculative approach.
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) attempted to establish a conceptual formulation of
historicism in philosophy. Dilthey challenged the concept of reason as free of interpretation,
neutral, and an a-historical faculty. This concept of rationality can be traced back to the ideals
of the Enlightenment. Dilthey’s direct target was Kantian rationality, which enjoyed a pre-
eminent position after the collapse of Hegelian speculation. In his unfinished work, The
Structure of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, Dilthey tried to carry out the task of
formulating a critique of historical reason, which he presented in contrast to Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason.
Dilthey argued that events in history are unique and cannot be repeated. To
understand the event, one must leave one’s present context of understanding and view it from
the historical context of that event. Hermeneutics is art of interpreting the historical contexts
of events in human life. For Dilthey, experience is essentially interpretive and rationality is
also socially and historically contextualized and conditioned.

1.4 New History

New Historicism differs from the old Historicism in large measure not based on the
approach but rather on changes in historical methodology, the rise of the so-called New
history. The term new history was indebted to the French term nouvelle histoire, itself
associated particularly with the historian Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, members of the
third generation of the Annales School, which appeared in the 1970s. The movement can be
associated with cultural history, history of representations, and histoire des mentalités. While
there may be no precise definition, the new history is best understood in contrast with prior
methods of writing history, resisting their focus on politics and "great men;" their insistence
on composing historical narrative; their emphasis on administrative documents as key source
materials; their concern with individuals' motivations and intentions as explanatory factors
for historical events; and their willingness to accept the possibility of historians' objectivity.

1.5 Foucault and Lacan

Since the 1950s, when Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault argued that each epoch has
its own knowledge system, which individuals are inexorably entangled with, many post-
structuralists have used historicism to describe the view that all questions must be settled
within the cultural and social context in which they are raised, answers cannot be found by
appeal to an external truth, but only within the confines of the norms and forms that phrase
the question. This version of historicism holds that there are only the raw texts, markings and
artifacts that exist in the present, and the conventions used to decode them.

1.6 The study

New Historicist scholars begin their analysis of literary texts by attempting to look at
other texts—both literary and non-literary—to which a literate public had access at the time
of writing, and what the author of the original text himself might have read. The purpose of
this research, however, is not to derive the direct sources of a text, as the New Critics did, but
to understand the relationship between a text and the political, social, and economic
circumstances in which it originated.
Since Stephen Greenblatt, a Renaissance Shakespeare scholar, played a pivotal role in
the rise of New Historicism, the school developed largely in Shakespeare and English
Renaissance Theatre studies. A major focus of those New Historicist critics led by
Moskowitz and Stephen Orgel has been on understanding Shakespeare less as a genius than
as a clue to the conjunction of the world of English Renaissance theatre and the complex
social politics of the time. The focus of new historical analysis is to bring to the foreground
the context and give it greater emphasis than previously recognized.
 The movement establishes itself upon four main contentions. (l) Literature is
historical, which means (in this exhibition) that a literary work is not primarily the record of
one mind’s attempt to solve certain formal problems and the need to find something to say; it
is a social and cultural construct shaped by more than one consciousness. The proper way to
understand it, therefore, is through the culture and society that produced it. (2) Literature,
then, is not a distinct category of human activity. It must be assimilated to history, which
means a particular vision of history. (3) Like works of literature, man himself is a social
construct, the sloppy composition of social and political forces—there is no such thing as a
human nature that transcends history. Renaissance man belongs inescapably and irretrievably
to the Renaissance. There is no continuity between him and us; history is a series of
"ruptures" between ages and men. (4) As a consequence, the historian/ critic is trapped in his
own "historicity." No one can rise above his own social formations, his own ideological
upbringing, in order to understand the past on its terms. A modern reader can never
experience a text as its contemporaries experienced it. Given this fact, the best a modern
historicist approach to literature can hope to accomplish, according to Catherine Belsey, is "to
use the text as a basis for the reconstruction of an ideology."[1]

1.7 Affinities
Among literary critics, New historicism has something in common with the historical
criticism of Hippolyte Taine, who argued that a literary work is less the product of its author's
imaginations than the social circumstances of its creation, the three main aspects of which
Taine called race, milieu, and moment. It is also a response to an earlier historicism, practiced
by early twentieth century critics such as John Livingston Lowes, which sought to de-
mythologize the creative process by reexamining the lives and times of canonical writers. But
New Historicism differs from both of these trends in its emphasis on ideology: The political
disposition, unknown to an author himself, that governs his work.
Clearly, in its historicism and in its political interpretations, New Historicism has
some affinity with Marxism. But whereas Marxism (at least in its cruder forms) tends to see
literature as part of a "superstructure" in which the economic "base" (that
is, material relations of production) manifests itself, New Historicist thinkers tend to take a
more nuanced Foucauldian view of power, seeing it not exclusively as class-related but
extending throughout society.
New Historicism also shares many of the same theories as with what is often called
Cultural Studies, but cultural critics are even more likely to put emphasis on the present
implications of their study and to position themselves in disagreement to current power
structures, working to give power to traditionally disadvantaged groups. Cultural critics also
downplay the distinction between "high" and "low" culture and often focus predominantly on
the productions of "popular culture."
 This shift of focus mirrors a trend in critical assessment of the decorative arts. Unlike
fine arts, which had been discussed in purely formal terms under the influences of Bernard
Berenson and Ernst Gombrich, nuanced discussion of the arts of design since the 1970s have
been set within social and intellectual contexts, taking account of fluctuations in luxury
trades, the availability of design prototypes to local craftsmen, the cultural horizons of the
patron, and economic considerations—"the limits of the possible" in economic historian
Fernand Braudel's famous phrase.[3]

1.8 Criticism
New historicism has come into conflict with some of the anti-historical tendencies
of postmodernism. New historicism denies the claim that society has entered a "post-modern"
or "post-historical" phase and allegedly ignited the "culture wars" of the 1980s.[4] The main
points of this argument are that new historicism, unlike post-modernism, acknowledges that
almost all historic views, accounts, and facts they use contain biases which derive from the
position of that view. As Carl Rapp states: "[The new historicists] often appear to be saying,
'We are the only ones who are willing to admit that all knowledge is contaminated, including
even our own.'"[5]
Some complaints sometimes made about New Historicism are that in seems to lessen
literature to a footnote of history. It has also been said that it does not pay attention to the
antiquate details involved with analyzing literature. New Historicism simply states historical
issues that literature may make connections with without explain why it has done this,
lacking in-depth knowledge to literature and its structures.
 Chapter 2
Looking at “Macbeth” through a
New Historicism critical perspective
The plays written by William Shakespeare have for long being considered universal
masterpieces. When studying Shakespeare’s plays, they are typically presented as a work of
and for all times. Very rarely we see a guided reading of his plays as a product of a specific
time and place- the late sixteenth, early seventeenth century in Elizabethan England. When
looking at Macbeth from a New Historicism critical perspective, we are invited to look at the
story of ambition, power, and revenge through the lenses of the social, religious, political,
ideological values in place during the time Shakespeare was writing.
According to The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, when it was
first introduced, the New Historicism critical perspective of literary analysis proposed to be a
―an array of reading practices that investigate a series of issues that emerge when critics
seek to chart the ways texts, in dialectical fashion, both represent a society’s behavior
patterns and perpetuate, shape, or alter that culture’s dominant codes.” Its goal is to
understand intellectual history through literature, and literature through its cultural context.
With that in mind, the goal of this analysis paper will be to examine Shakespeare’s Macbeth
as product of the time, place, and historical circumstances of its composition rather than as an
isolated work of art or text.
New Historicists critics would look at Shakespeare’s plays as inseparable from the
context in which he wrote them. Macbeth was written early in the reign of James I, the King
of Scotland who had succeeded his cousin, Queen Elizabeth on the English throne in 1603. It
is believed that Shakespeare had received royal approval for a Scottish play, and that there
was special interest in the presence of witches and witchcraft, as King James considered
himself an expert on the theme, having written a book on the subject, Daemonologie, first
published in Edinburgh (1597), and republished upon his ascension to the English throne.
Stephen Orgel emphasizes that ―witchcraft and kingship have an intimate relationship in the
Jacobean royal ideology. This is a culture in which the supernatural and witchcraft, even for
sceptics, are as much part of reality as religious truth is.” (Orgel, 162)
Macbeth is based on a true story. Duncan was the King of Scotland between 1034-40,
and Macbeth was his successor, the King of Scotland between 1040-47. Using Holinshed's
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587) as his source, Shakespeare sets the
characters and the action of his play, deliberately mixing fact and fiction in his historically
inaccurate recount of the plot. By looking at his play through the New Historicisms lenses, it
is fundamental to look at the changes that were deliberately made, trying to understand how
the cultural context might have been determinant to the playwright's choices. It is also crucial
to keep in mind the audience for whom Shakespeare was catering, their expectations when
paying to watch a performance, as well as what was expected by the ones financing these
productions.
According to the Holinshed's 'Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland' , Duncan
was a weak, terrible leader. He led a disastrous campaign into Northumbria, and was forced
to retreat. His cousin, Macbeth, chief of the Northern Scots, who also had a legitimate claim
to the throne through his mother’s connections, formed an alliance with his cousin, the Earl
of Orkney, and they defeated and killed Duncan in 1040. Macbeth claimed the throne and
became the King. In the Chronicles he is presented as a respected, strong leader, who ruled
wisely for 17 years.
In Shakespeare’s play, Duncan is portrayed as a strong, wise and elderly king whereas
in reality he seems to have been a young, weak and ineffective ruler. Macbeth, according to
Shakespeare, had no legitimate claim to the throne whereas the real Macbeth had a
respectable claim through his mother’s blood relatives. And in the play, all the action takes
place over a year whereas in reality Macbeth ruled for 17 years. So, what would justify the
changes made by the playwright? Which interests might them be serving? Why was
important for the author to present the characters and the plot in the way he did?
If we, once again, take our attention to King James, it is interesting to notice that ―the
play had a direct relevance to the new king in that the Stuart dynasty was descended from
Macbeth’s companion Banquo. In the historical records, however, Banquo is fully Macbeth’s
accomplice in the murder of King Duncan, and Shakespeare significantly revised his sources
in order to turn Banquo into a suitable ethical ancestor.” (Orgel, 183)
Macbeth is a play that places at the center of its action the murder of a King. But not
of a weak, ineffective ruler - the King Duncan assassinated in the play is wise, kind and an
efficient leader. A rightful king that was brutally assassinated by one of his generals, his own
cousin, while he was a guest in his home. His life was taken by an ambitious man that had
absolutely no right to the throne, while the king was a guest in this man’s house. And that is
relevant because in Elizabethan times it was the responsibility of the owner of the house to
safeguard his guests- whether they were good friends or enemies- it was a matter of honour.
After the murder was completed, the ambitious general that was so blindly seeking
power does not get to rule for long- he does not sit in power for 17 years, but is otherwise
quickly killed as well. Shakespeare opens up the conspiracy on stage, and gives light to its
brutal consequences to the conspirators.
Shakespeare is writing about a historical event that had happened over 500 years
before the play was staged. Most of his audience members could maybe identify the names of
Kings and noblemen mentioned, but were most certainly unfamiliar to the actual historical
facts of the mentioned events. This way, Shakespeare could easily use the names of these
historical figures that would somehow speak to the common men as the base to present a plot
that would highlight the outrageous consequences of disrupting what the Stuart dynasty
believed to be the natural order of things. Macbeth is an openly political play, and in it
Shakespeare is supporting the agenda of uniting English and Scottish crowns under one ruler,
under a single kingdom by creating and emphasizing commonalities between the two
kingdoms, as well as highlighting the horrific consequences to the ones that try to disrupt the
natural order.
It is important to note that the process of succession was not a hereditary, linear one in
Elizabethan times. Queen Elizabeth had no heirs, and so every male descendant remotely
related to her had equal rights to the crown. She appointed her cousin, King James IV of
Scotland, as her successor, and it was of crucial importance that his right ship to the throne
would not be questioned. An attempt to challenge the established succession could create
internal chaos and undesired wars. The king himself, a believer in witchcraft as earlier
mentioned here, was convinced that ―from the earliest years of his reign, a conspiracy of
witches, directed by the devil, had been intent on destroying him.‖ (Orgel, 183) The
consequences of Macbeth's regicide and tyranny as displayed on the play are clearly serving
the purpose of illustrating the kinds of disruption, chaos and terror that were prevented by the
peaceful ascension of James to the throne. In Shakespeare's play, it is made very clear that
there is all the difference in this world between a usurping tyrant, and a lawful good king.
Since James’ succession to the throne, Shakespeare’s theatrical company had been
attached to the royal household, which made the king himself the company’s patron, now
called the King’s Men. Nevertheless, with Macbeth, even though the intention to please the
king and to advocate for the permanence of order and the unification of English and Scottish
kingdoms is very present, it is also relevant to point out that ―it could hardly have offered a
comforting precedent: Duncan’s virtue is no protection against the murderous intentions of
his hosts, however inevitable their ultimate retribution; in that sense, Shakespeare was truer
to the ambiguities of history than to the demands of patronage. The play speaks most
profoundly to the universal human condition.” (Orgel, 183)
Looking at the tragedy of Macbeth through a New Historicism critical perspective
may sound as an attempt to diminish the play’s artistic value. Nevertheless, it is an exercise
that does not necessarily excludes the aesthetics analysis and values of the text, but that aims
on bringing light to the historical period in which the work was composed, adding to its
analysis valuable discussion points regarding the cultural context in which it was produced,
forcing us to evaluate how much influence they might have had in the playwrights choices
and desired intentions. It becomes clear that Shakespeare's portrayal of Macbeth is a direct
consequence of his time, and that is an important aspect of understanding Shakespeare today.
 Chapter 3
Conclusion:

In this way, it can be said that New Historicism provides a novel perspective of
literary criticism, and opens up new dimensions for the readers not to restrict themselves to
the verbal construct of work only, but to unravel the historical and cultural consciousness of
the writer also. The approach is a compendium of diverse procedures, and its employment in
critical enquiry is bound to enlighten the readership, and thereby enrich the process of
defining, classifying, and evaluating works of literature. Therefore, there is a scope for spatial
and temporal analysis of literary text. The past is revived for the utility of the present.
 Bibliography

 Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. London: Methuen, 1980. ISBN

9780416729504.
 Burke, Peter. Overture: The New History, it’s Past and it’s Future. In New
Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke. University Park, PA:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. ISBN 9780271008349.
 Myers, D. G. The New Historicism in Literary Study. 1989. Retrieved August
19, 2008.
 Seaton, J. The metaphysics of postmodernism. Review of Carl Rapp, Fleeing
the Universal: The Critique of Post-rational Criticism (1998), Humanitas 12.1
(1999). Retrieved August 20, 2008.

 Orgel, Stephen. Authentic Shakespeare and Other Problems of the Early

Modern Stage. Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2013. Print.

 Orgel, Stephen. The Portable Shakespeare. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.

 Kadzow, Hunter, Alison Conway, and Bryce Traister. "New Historicism." The
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. John Hopkins University
Press, 2005. Web. 17 July 2017.