New

Historicism
What is New Historicism
New historicism theory – an explanation
• New historicism refers to the analysis of literature while taking a
keen interest in the socio-cultural and historical events that are
involved in building literary work as it assumes that every piece of
literature is as a result of a historical event that created it.
What is New Historicism
• New historicism basically takes into account that literary work or
rather any literature work has time, place and thus a historical
event as its key components and that these key elements can
actually be deciphered from the literary text following keen
analysis of the text even if these elements are not clearly depicted
by a writer in his or her work.
What is New Historicism
• New historicism deals with textuality of history, that is, the fact that
history is built and fictionalized, and the history of the literary text
is without a doubt found within the socio-cultural and political
conditions surrounding its conception and interpretation as stated
by Louis Montrose.
Some of the key assumptions of new historicism which were given by Harold
Aram Veeser in “The New Historicism include:

• Each act that is expressed is a result of a network of material

practices.
• Every act of uncovering, analyzing and opposition uses ways that it
condemns and hence may conform to that which it exposes.
• Literary and non-literary texts circulate inseparably.
Some of the key assumptions of new historicism which were given by Harold
Aram Veeser in “The New Historicism include:

• There is no social boundary whether imagined or archived that gives

access to universally unalterable truths nor portrays the
unchangeable nature of human.
• An analytical or rather critical means and a language good enough
to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy is
described.
 In summary, historical criticism takes into account the
outside influences or factors that help build the context of
literature such as the author’s life, historical and cultural
circumstances at the time in which the literature was
written unlike other forms of criticism such as textual and
formal criticism which consider the text itself.