NEW HISTORICISM

 

NEW HISTORICISM

 

The term ‘New Historicism’ was coined by the American critic Stephen Greenblatt (b:1943) in his book ‘Renaissance Self fashioning: from more to Shakespeare’ (1980).  New historicism is a method of literary criticism that emphasizes the history of the text by relating it to the configurations of power, society or ideology in a given time.  Though there were many critics in the 1970s with the same tendencies, this book challenged conservative critical views about Jacobean theatre and linked the plays much more closely with the political events of their era than previous critics done.  Actually, historicism is a theory in which history is seen as a standard of value or a determinant of events.  But, New Historicism is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non literary texts, usually of the same historical period.  It practices a study in which literary and non-literary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform and interrogate each other.  It involves an intensified willingness to read all the textual traces of the past.  It has a combined interest on both the ‘Textuality of History’ and the ‘Historicity of the Texts’.

The practice of giving ‘equal weighting’ to literary and non-literary material is the first and major difference between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ historicism.  A new historical essay will place the literary text with in the form of non-literary text.  Greenblatt’s main innovation was to juxtapose the plays of the Renaissance period with the horrifying colonialist policies pursued by all the major European powers of the Era.  Through ‘The Modernist Shakespeare’ of Hugh Grady, he draws allegation to ‘the marginalization and dehumanizing of suppressed others’, by starting an essay with the analysis of a contemporary historical document which overlaps in some way with the subject matter of the plays.  Thus, new historicism accepts Derrida’s deconstructive reading.  Whatever is represented in a text is thereby remade.  Thus its aim is not to present the past as it really was, but to present a new reality by re-situating it.

As an example of ‘old’ historicism, we may consider E.M.W Tillyard’s, ‘The Elizabethan World Picture’(1943) and Shakespeare’s History plays (1944), where conservative mental attitude of Elizabethan and their outlooks reflected in Shakespeare’s plays are taken into considerations.  Here the traditional approach to Shakespeare is characterized by the combination of the historical framework with, the practice of ‘close reading’.  But, the New Historicism is resolutely anti-establishment, always on the side of liberal ideals of personal freedom and accepting and celebrating all forms of difference and ‘deviance’.   It is powerful enough to penetrate the most intimate areas of personal life.  New historicism deals with power struggles with a social system, how it affects people and also how they rebel against it.  ‘The Tempest’ is the play full of such struggles between Caliban and Prospero.  Prospero accuses Caliban of being ungrateful for all that he has taught and given.  So, he calls him a lying slave, where as Caliban sees Prospero and Miranda as imperialists who took control of his island.  Thus, according to the New Historicists ‘The Tempest’ is about colonization and freedom apart from forgiveness.  In this way, the New Historicism opens up new dimension for the reader.  The goal of new historicists is to comprehend literature through its historical and cultural context while analysing the cultural and intellectual history portrayed by the literature.

            Though the New Historicism is founded upon post-structuralist thinking, it avoids the latter’s dense style and vocabulary.  Instead it presents its data and draws its conclusions.  The data is also allowed to be interpreted.  The material itself is often distinctive and fascinating.  It is totally different from those produced by any other critical approach and immediately gives the reader the feeling that the new territory is being entered.  The political edge of the new historicist is sharp and at the same time it avoids the problems faced by the Marxist criticism and helps them to have a critical enquiry of their own and thereby enrich the process of defining, classifying and evaluating the works of literature.  In this way the past is no doubt revived for the utility of the present.  Moreover, cultural materialism is actually one of the major anthropological perspectives for analysing human societies.  But, the key difference between New Historicism and cultural materialism is that New Historicism focuses on the oppression in the society that has to be overcome in order to achieve change, where as cultural materialism focuses on how that change is brought about.  Though the methods of New Historicism are not greatly valued or admired by historians, its approach is a way of ‘doing’ history which has a strong appeal for non-historians.

------Thulasidharan V