New Historicism

What is New Historicism?

What is new historicism? New historicism is a movement in literary criticism that began in the 1980s.
Its main claim is that the themes and meaning of literature are not universal and cannot be derived from the text
alone. Rather, they are the product of the author’s time and cultural situation. These critics don’t, however,
believe people can look at history objectively. They believe that people’s interpretation of history is influenced
by many factors including socio-political ones. As such, the interpretations of literature are also influenced by
the social and political factors of the reader.

Prior to new historicism, new criticism was the formalist movement of literary interpretation that was
in vogue. This criticism was considered a type of closed criticism in that its proponents did not believe the
author’s biography or any cultural or political background were necessary in order to interpret the work. They
focused heavily on close reading and on form.

New Historicism Theory

Following are some of the key tenants of new historicism theory.

Political and social situation: New historicists focus heavily on the political and social situations of the
time. They do not just focus on the predominant social views, however. They focus on underlying
structures and less dominant structures as well and study how they interact.

Author’s background: They also are concerned with the author’s background and how that influences
the text and what it can tell the reader about the time.

Power structures: New historicism came out of Marxist criticism. Marxist criticism focuses on ideas of
the oppressed and the oppressor. In a similar vein, new historicism is concerned with power structures.

Circulation: In regards to power, new historicists do not believe that power just resides at the top of
society. Rather it is circulated, and everyone plays a role in maintaining current power structures.

What really happened: New historicism is interested in finding out what really happened during the
time when the text was produced. It is not just interested in hearing the predominant views of the day.

Political function: The critics are concerned with the political function of the work itself.
 Rejection of closed reading: New historicists reject the formalist notion of the closed reading, a
reading in which the text is taken as itself with no attention paid to the context in which it was
produced.
New Historicism is American and Cultural Materialism is Britain. New Historicism does close
readings of historical documents and uses them as co-texts to literary texts, rather than as background.
(E.g., one historical text may be used as the sole witness for a claimed change in attitude toward an
aspect of sexuality.) The rarely contextualize these documents making for an accessible reading
experience. The focus is on reading history not necessarily as what happened but as situating a reality,
as mentioned in the Biopolitics lecture I recently attended. (It is no surprise that this lecturer was greatly
influenced by Foucault.) In other words, history is not seen as like a ‘testimonio’ but a story, as
literature. This type of criticism was influenced by Derrida, especially his idea that there is nothing
outside of the text, in the sense that we don’t have the world (historical events, people) but only the
word that is written about/by them. It seems a bit ironic that a criticism called historicism does not
contextualize, but then again, they are not seeking to reproduce history. Another influential post-
structuralist on this theory is Michel Foucault, who came up with the idea of a Panoptican state that is
not maintaining its surveillance by force or intimidation but by the power of its ‘discursive practices,’ or
via ideology (a notion we saw in Althusser as well.) As Barry writes, we’ve already seen some parallels:
“There is a clear affinity between Gramsi’s ‘hegemony,’ Althusser’s ‘interpellation,’ and Foucault’s
‘discursive practices,’ since all of these concern the way power is internalized by those whom it
disempowers, so that it does not have to be constantly enforced externally” . Thus new historicism
always has political leanings although it seems less polemical than Marxism. It is ‘anti-establishment’
and celebrates deviance from the repressive, Panoptican state. It looks for forms of patriarchy and
colonial mindsets for example.

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.
How is New Historicism different from old historicism?
Both new and old historicism are focused on the cultural situation at the time of the writing. One main
difference, however, is that old historicists see history as the background to literature whereas new historicists
see it as primary.

Who invented New Historicism?

Stephen Greenblatt is the man credited with inventing new historicism. He claims that literature is always
historical. He was the first to use the term, new historicism.
What are the features of New Historicism?

The main feature of new historicism is that they critic takes into account the entire historical situation
surrounding the time the work was published. This includes the predominant social and political situation as
well as more hidden ones. The critic also takes into account the background of the author.

Cultural Materialism
A term coined by Raymond Williams and popularised by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (in their
collection of essays Political Shakespeare), Cultural Materialism refers to a Marxist orientation of New
Historicism, characterised by the analysis of any historical material within a politicized framework, in a radical
and subversive manner. Cultural Materialism emphasises studying the historical context, looking at those
historical aspects that have been discarded or silenced in other narratives of history, through an eclectic
theoretical approach, backed by the political commitment arising from the influence of Marxist
and Feminist perspective and thus executing a textual analysis—close reading that critiques traditional
approaches, especially on canonical texts.

Like the New Historicists, Cultural Materialists also believe in the textuality of history and the historicity of
texts; they are aware of the political agendas of the text and hence are alert to the ways in which power exerts
itself through implicit workings of ideology within the text. While they believe that New Historicists generate
apolitical readings, in which there is no question of agency on the part of the marginalised, Cultural
Materialists are consciously political, and aim at transforming the social order; as they seek readings that focus
on the marginalised and the exploited, and also book at the possibilities of subversion and resistance in both the
text and the interpretive act. They are conscious of the subversive potential of  literature for subcultural
resistance and hence propose ‘dissident reading’, which interrogates the hidden political agenda and power
struggles within a text.

What is Cultural Materialism?

The origin of cultural materialism can be traced back to work of the left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams,
who coined the term cultural materialism. It can be described as a blending of leftist culturalism and Marxist
analysis. This theory came into being in the early 1980s along with new historicism. Cultural materialism deals
with specific historical documents and attempt to analyse and recreate the dominant set of ideals or beliefs of a
particular moment in history.

Jonathan Dollimore and Allen Sinfield identifies four characteristics of cultural materialism.

Historical context: what was happening at the time when this work was created?

Theoretical method: incorporation of older theories and models such as structuralism and post-structuralism

Close Textual analysis: building on theoretical analysis of canonical texts that are identified as ‘prominent
cultural icons.’

Political Commitment: Incorporating political theories such as Feminist and Marxist theory

What is the difference between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism?

Focus:

New Historicism focus on the oppressive aspects of society people has to overcome to achieve change.

Cultural Materialism focuses on how that change is formed.

Views:

New Historicists claim that they are aware of the difficulties, limitations, contradictions and problems of trying
to establish the truth; nevertheless, they believe in the truth of their work.

Cultural Materialist sees new historicism as politically ineffective since it does not believe in absolute truth
or knowledge. They feel that cultural materialists do not believe in the truth of what they write.

Political Situation:

New Historicists situate a text within the political situation of its contemporary society.

Cultural Materialists situate a text with the political situation of the critic’s contemporary world.