New Historicism

Key Terms
Discourse Subversion Containment Power Cultural Materialism Diachronic Synchronic

Key Terms
Discourse is the term used to designate the system of thoughts, ideas and images that encapsulate the concept of culture. Through discourse one is able to identify the social class, gender, ideology and ethnicity of the speaker.

Key Terms
Subversion and Containment - "capacity of the dominant order to generate subversion so as to use it to its own ends Subversion overthrow of something; rebellion Containment attempt to stop spread of something; control Power - is not merely physical force but a pervasive human dynamic determining our relationships to others.

Key Terms
Cultural Materialism a method which is related to New Historicism Diachronic concerning historical development Synchronic studying something at point in time

What is New Historicism?

Stephen Greenblatt
First coined the term in the early 1980s. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning American literary critic, theorist and scholar. He is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics

Old Historicism New Historicism History as written as an History is subjective. accurate view of what History is shaped by the has really occurred. people who lived it. Historical textual Viewing a text as background is culture in action, secondarily important, blurring the distinction because the text between an artistic mirrors the history of production and any its time. other kind of social production or event.

Michel Foucault
Is a Post-Structuralist critique who most influenced this critical approach, and his histories of everything from madness to sexuality are histories of the discourses that have constructed the past.

New Historicism
New Historians see the historical as textual, and one effect is to create a new relationship between the historical and the literary text. History is not some unmediated reality out there, some stable background that the literary text reflects or refers to.

Kinds of Patterns
Issues of POWER
NH tend to concentrate on those at the top of the social hierarchy

Circulation of DISCOURSES

Presence in other kinds of cultural representations

So did you get it?

So in other words

New Historicism
New Historicism is a theory in literary criticism that suggests literature must be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic.

New Historicism
It evaluates how the work is influenced by the time in which the author wrote it. It also examines the social sphere in which the author moved, the psychological background of the writer, and the books and theories that may have influenced him or her. Beyond that, many critics also look at the impact a work had and consider how it influenced others.

New Historicism
New Historicism acknowledges that any criticism of a work is colored by the critics beliefs, social status, and other factors. Many New Historicists begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves, their backgrounds, and their prejudices. Both the work and the reader are affected by everything that has influenced them.

New Historicism
New Historicism thus represents a significant change from previous critical theories like New Criticism, because its main focus is to look at many elements outside of the work, instead of reading the text in isolation.

How do you read a text in New Historicism?

New Historicists read:

The life of the author Social rules found within the text The manner in which the text reveals a historical situation The ways in which other historical texts can help us understand the texts

POWER and DISCOURSES

Jose Maria Sison

He wrote the poem, A Guerilla Is Like a Poet, in 1968. Sison is the founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines and one of the founders of Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth). During the martial law years, he was arrested, tortured and held in solitary confinement for almost 10 years.

THE GUERILLA IS LIKE A POET Jose Maria Sison The guerilla is like a poet Keen to the rustle of leaves The break of twigs The ripples of the river The smell of fire And the ashes of departure.

The inner silence, the outer innocence The steel tensile in-grace That ensnares the enemy. The guerilla is like a poet. He moves with the green brown multitude In bush burning with red flowers That crown and hearten all Swarming the terrain as a flood Marching at last against the stronghold. An endless movement of strength Behold the protracted theme: The peoples epic, the peoples war. 1968

The guerilla is like a poet. He has merged with the trees The bushes and the rocks Ambiguous but precise Well-versed on the law of motion And master of myriad images.
The guerilla is like a poet. Enrhymed with nature The subtle rhythm of the greenery

Thank you for listening!