Exploring Historicism and New Historicism: Perspectives on History and Literature

Understanding Historicism and New Historicism, this article delves into their definitions, perspectives on history, treatment of literary and non-literary texts, examples, and the emergence of New Historicism in the 1980s. It explores how these approaches unify cultural and social texts, challenge traditional historical narratives, and seek to re-situate the past by examining co-texts and negotiating societal conventions.

• Historicism
• New Historicism
• Literature
• Cultural Poetics
• Non-literary texts

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1. Historicism/New Historicism By S.Sajeev

2. What is history? Two meanings: The events of the past. Telling a story about the events of the past.

3. Historicism General/Popular perspective of history Deceiving/Cheating History constructs literature Literature is not a part of discourse

4. Historicism Cultural and Social Texts are unified one (Political, Social, cultural) Previously it was seen in isolation until 19thc. Non-literary texts are used in contexts/ situations

5. Historicism Non-literary texts, such as letters, journals, autobiographies, memoirs, travelogues are treated as secondary or viewed as background for the literary texts. It is situated in the past. (Opposite of anachronism)

6. Examples of Historicism E.M.W Tillyard s The Elizabethan World Picture(1943) Shakespeare's History Plays (1944) Hudson s Social History of England

7. Examples of Historicism Construction of Virgin Queen/ Selvi J. J In Shaping fantasis by Louis Montrose Cleopatra s relationship Shakespeare s writing

8. New Historicism Began in 1980s, American, Cultural Materialism in England Coined by American critic Stephen Greenblatt in Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) Later preferred the term Cultural Poetics

9. New Historicism A mixture of Marxist and poststructralist orientations Def: The work of art is the product of a negotiation between a creator or class or creators, equipped with a complex, communally shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and practices of Society. Greenblatt

10. New Historicism Non-literary texts are treated as co-texts Focusing on unpopular version of history The aim: Not finding the truth rather re-situating the past

11. New Historicism Literary texts construct history/power Equal weighting History as text , events are irrecoverably lost, therefore anecdote , lived experience Louis Montrose s essay, I would like to recount an Elizabethan dream not Shakespeare s A Midsummer Night s Dream but one dreamt by Simon Forman on 23 January 1597.

12. Examples Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton s collection of essays New Historicism and Renaissance Drama The age of confinement, Puritan attack on canrival, slavery, The rise of Patriarchy Museum Indian independence Virgin queen as the most flirtatious woman of all women Louis Montrose in Shaping fantasies in 1983 Who discovered India?

13. New Historicism Entrapment/ pessimistic Mitchell Foucault Focus on discourse and power. Invisible Bullets in 1980 Subversiveness is the very product of that power and furthers its end. Greenblatt.

14. New Historicism Hegemony or dominant ideology- Antonio Gramsci Jeremy Bentham Panopticon - Omnipresence

15. New Historicism Who was the most celebrated dramatist of the 16thcentury? Mahmud of Ghazni

16. Thank you