The presentation is about new historism and also a comparison with old historism.

1. PREPARED BY: MAITRI. R. MUNJPARA.
ROLL NO: 19
SEMESTER: 2
YEAR: 2013-14
PAPER NAME: 8.THE CULTURAL STUDIES
TOPIC: NEW HISTORICISM
SUBMITTED TO: DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
MAHARAJA
KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI
BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY.

2. What is New Historicism?
 “A method based on the parallel reading of
literary and non-literary texts, usually of the
same time period.”
 New Historicism is a school of literary
theory which combines critical theory into
easier forms of practice for academic literary
theorists of the 1990s.
 New historicists ask, 'How has the event been
interpreted?' and 'What do the interpretations
tell us about the interpreters?’. So New
Historicism resists the notion that "...history
is a series of events that have a linear, causal
relationship: event A caused event B; event B
caused event C; and so on(Tyson).
 New Historicist are Stephen Greenblatt, J.W.
Lever, Jonathan Dollimore, H.Aram Veeser.

3. Stephen Greenblatt
 Stephen Greenblatt
first developed in his
work in 1980.
 Afterwards it goes on
spreading during the
same decade.
 He wrote in his book
“Will of the World”,
 Context is replaced by
“co-text”, that is an
interrelated non-
literary text from the
same time period.

4. Michel Foucault & New Historicism
 New Historicism is always
anti-establishment, on
the side of liberal ideas
and personal freedoms.
 Believe in Michel
Foucault’s idea of an
all-seeing—panoptic—
surveillance State.
 The panoptic state
brings power through
rational practices,
circulating ideology
through the body-politic.
 The State is seen as a
monolithic structure and
change is nearly
impossible.

5. New Historicism & Shakespeare
 Shakespeare’s play
“Merchant of Venice”
 Question always raised...
 The play shows Shakespeare
to be anti-Semitic?
 According to Historicists:
 Work must be judged in the
context in which it was
written.
 Studying the history
reveals more about the text;
studying the text reveals
more about the history.

6. Advantages of New Historicism
 Written in a far more accessible
way than post-structuralist theory.
 It presents its data and draws its
conclusions in a less dense way.
 Material is often fascinating and
distinctive.
 New territory(subject).
 Political edge is always
sharp, avoids problems of straight
Marxist criticism.

7. Difference between Old & New Historicism
Old Historicism New Historicism
 Hierarchical
 A historical
movement: creates a
historical
framework in which
to place the text.
 “The word of the
past replaces the
world of the past.
 Parallel Reading
 A historicist
movement. Interested in
history as represented
and recorded in written
documents—history as
text.
 The aim is not to
represent the past as
it really was, but to
present a new reality
by re- situating it.