Assignment Topic : New Historicism and British cultural materialism
Name: Bhaliya Ravi
Roll no.:24
M.A. Semester: 2
Enrolment No.:14101004
Year: 2015-16
Paper no.:8 (Cultural studies)
Submitted to: Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
ravibhaliya5@gmail.com
Introduction
New
Historicism specifically concerned
with question of power and culture. Part of the difficulty of
introducing this school is that a
number of different approaches
to History and culture
often get jumped together under the category of New Historicism.
New
Historicism , since the early 1980s, has been the accepted name
for a mode of literary study
that is proponents Historicism
The term ‘new historicism’ was coined by the American critic Stephen greenbelts
whose book renaissance self fashioning from more to Shakespeare (1980) is
usually regarded as its beginning.
New historicism has been the accepted name for a mod of literary study
that its performance appose to the formalism they attribute both of the ‘new
criticism’ and to the critical ‘deconstruction’ that followed it what is most
distinctive in this mode of historical study is chiefly the consequence of
concepts and practices of literary analysis and interpretation and evaluation.
New historicists conceive of a literary text as ‘situated’ within the totality
of the institutions, social practices & the discourses.
In an often quoted phrase, Louis Montrose described the new historicism
as “a reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and the textuality of
history.” A number of historicists claim that these cultural and ideological
representations in texts serve mainly to reproduce, conform, and propagate the
complex pourer structures of domination and subordination which characterize a
given society
The concepts, themes, and procedures of new historicist criticism took
shape in the late 1975s and early 1980s , most prominently in writings by
scholars of the English renaissance. New historicist procedures also have
parallels in the critics of African, American and other ethnic literatures who
stress the role of culture formations dominated by white Europeans in
suppressing, marginalizing or distorting the achievements of nonwhite and non Europeans
people. In the 1990s, various forms of new historicism, and related types of
criticism that stress the embeddedness of literature in historical circumstances,
replaced deconstruction as the reigning mode of adventgrade critical theory and
practice.
Definition
“New historicism is that it
is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and nonliterary texts,
usually of the same historical period”.
New historicism refuses to ‘privilege’ the literary text: instead of a
literary, foreground and a historical ‘background’ it envisages and practices a
mode of study in which literary and nonliterary texts are given equal weight
and constantly inform or interrogate each other. In the definition of new
historicism given by the American critic Louis Montrose:He defines it as a combined
interest in the textuality of history, the historicity of texts’. It involves’
an intensified willingness to read ‘all’ of the attention traditionally
conferred only on literary texts’ so new historicism embodies’ a paradox, it is
an approach to literature in which there is no privileging of the literary. A
new historical essay will place the literary text within the ‘frame’ of a
nonliterary text.
Louis Montrose in the first silence of the essay discussed later.
I would like to recent an Elizalathan dream not Shakespeare’s ‘A midsummer
night’s dream but one dreamt by Simon Forman on 23 January 1597’. This dramatic
openings often cite date and place and have all the force of the documentary,
eyewitness account, strongly evoking the quality of lived experience rather
than ‘history’ since these historical documents are analyses in their own
right, we should perhaps call then ‘contexts’ rather than ‘contexts’.
New and old historicism
The earlier approaches made a hierarchical separation between the
literary text, which was the object of value, the jeavel, as it were and the
historical ‘background’, which was merely the setting, and by definition of
less worth. The practice of giving equal weighting it literary &
nonliterary material is that the first and major difference between the ‘new’
and ‘old’ historicism. A second important difference between old and new historicism
is encapsulated in the word ‘archival’ in the phrase the phrase the archival
continuum.
New historicism and Foucault
New historicism is antiestablishment, always implicitly on the side of
liberal ideals of personal freedom. Foucault’s pervasive image of the state is
that of ‘panoptic’ (allseeing) surveillance. The pan option was a design for a
circular prison. Discourse is the whole ‘mental set’ and ideology which encloses
the thinking of all members of a given society. There is a multiplicity of
discourses. Here the state is seen as a monolithic structure and change becomes
almost impossible. Foucault’s worklooks at the institutions which enable this
pourer to be maintained. A single historical text is sometimes the single
witness. The interpretative weight thus placed upon a single document is often
very great. Hence, one should not accept admiration of the methods by historians.
Advantages and disadvantages
It is founded upon poststructuralist thinking. It presents its data and
draws its conclusions. The material itself is often fascinating and wholly
distinctive. The political edge of new historicist writing is always sharp, but
at the same time it avoids the problems frequently encountered in ‘straight’
Marxist criticism.
New historicism juxtaposes literary material
with contemporary non –literary text.
Example from fairies Queen
In Spenser’s fairies Queen, Elizabeth can project herself as the Queen
whose virginity has mystical and magical potency because such images are given
currency in court masques, in comedies & pastoral epic poetry. The figure
oh Elizabeth stimulates the production and promotion of such work and imagery.
Thus, history is textualised and texts are historicized.
British Cultural Materialism
The British critic graham Holderness describes cultural materialism as
‘a politicized from of historiography’ It can be called the study of historical
material within a politicized framework. This term was made current in 1985
when it was used by Jonathan dollinore and Alan sin field as the Sublette of
their edited coactions of essay political Shakespeare. The characteristic of
cultural materialism are
1) Historical context
2) Theoretical method
3) Political commitment, and
4) Textual analysis
The
emphasis on historical context undermines the transcendent significance traditionally
accorded is the literary text. The word ‘transcendent’ roughly means timeless
for example studies of Shakespeare’s plays are proved is be timeless.
The
emphasis on theoretical method signifies the break with liberal humanism and
the absorbing of the lessons of structuralism, post structuralism etc.
The
emphasis on political commitment signifies the influence of Marxist and
feminist perspectives and the break from the conservative framework.
The
stress on textual analysis locates the critique of traditional approaches where
it cannot be ignored. The two words in the term cultural materialism are
further defined ‘culture’ will include ‘all’ forms of culture while
‘materialism’ signifies the opposite of idealism an idealist belief would be
that high culture represents the free and independent play of the talented
individual mind In cultural materialism there is an emphasis on the working of
the institutions through which Shakespeare is company, the film, industry, the publishers
who produce textbooks for school and college, and the national curriculum which
lays sown the requirement that specific Shakespeare plays be studied by all
school pupils.
Difference between cultural materialism and new
historicism.
Cultural materialist tend to
concentrate on the interventions where by men and women make their own history
where as new historicists tent it focus on the less than ideal circumstances in
which they do so that is on the ‘power of social and ideological’ structures’ which
restrain them.
Conclusion
To wind up we may say that the differences
between these two approaches are partly the result of their different
intellectual frameworks. New historicism was influenced by Foucault while
Raymond Williams influenced cultural materialism. The cultural materialism see
new historicists as cutting themselves off from effective political position by
their acceptance of particular version of post structuralism, when new
historicist claim that Foucault gives them entry into non truth oriented from
historicist study of text.
