New Historicism and British cultural materialism

 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.