& CULTURAL MATERIALISM

NEW HISTORICISM

POLITICISED
HISTORICAL TEXT PARALLEL STUDY LITERARY TEXT FOUCAULT GREENBLATT HAYDEN WHITE NEW HISTORICISTS
HISTORIOGRAPHY
(Graham Holderness)

challenges binaries

In Old H. = setting, background
Equal weighting of LT & HT In Old H. = object of value, jewel State = panoptical read history with same Historical events History/Fiction historians not immune to juxtapose literary 'defamiliarise' focus attention on issues
surveillance attention we give literature = value-neutral Actual/Imaginable perspectives (filter) & non-literary texts literary text from of state power,
study of HISTORICAL MATERIAL
literary scholarship patriarchy & colonisation
(literary texts included) within a
POLITICISED FRAMEWORK

vs because

hierarchical notion of personal can be emplotted we only know the actual read the former in the see it how they are & their
separation (Old H.) freedom associated w/ through the imaginable light of the latter?? as new maintained 'mind-set'
Attention to:
NH

1. Historical context 2. Theoretical method 3. Political commitment Textual analysis

celebrate differences PERSONAL SPHERE fiction-making "coherence" achieved by history is actual is 'like'
becomes SPHERE OF (literary operation) tailoring to story form 'like' fiction imaginable
POLITICAL ACTION

undermines "timeless"
quality of the literary
text & seeks to recover its
similitude events/
"histories"
story types
break with liberal signifies the influence of commitment to make not
humanism in favour of Marxist and feminist just abstract theory, but
structuralism, post- perspectives rather practising it on
structuralism and other texts that are deemes
post 70's approaches important national &
cultural icons