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A Summary of New Historicism literary theory

Critical theory today

Lois Tyson

Traditional historicism and new historicism

Most of us raised to think about history in the traditional way would read an account of a

Revolutionary War battle written by an American historian in 1944 and ask, if we asked anything

at all, “Is this account accurate?” or “What does this battle tell us about the ‘spirit of the age’ in

which it was fought?” In contrast, a new historicist would read the same account of that battle

and ask, “What does this account tell us about the political agendas and ideological conflicts of

the culture that produced and read the account in 1944?” New historical interest in the battle

itself would produce such questions as, “At the time in which it was fought, how was this battle

represented (in newspapers, magazines, tracts, government documents, stories, speeches,

drawings, and photographs) by the American colonies or by Britain (or by European countries),

and what do these representations tell us about how the American Revolution shaped and was

shaped by the cultures that represented it?”

Traditional historians ask, “What happened?” and “What does the event tell us about history?” In

contrast, new historicists ask, “How has the event been interpreted?” and “What do the interpretations tell

us about the interpreters?”

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Concepts of Traditional history

Linear casual

For most traditional historians, history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A

caused event B, event B caused event C, and so on.

Objective

They believe we are perfectly capable, through objective analysis, of uncovering the facts about

historical events, and those facts can some- times reveal the spirit of the age, that is, the world

view held by the culture to which those facts refer.

Progressive

Finally, traditional historians generally believe that history is progressive, that the human species is

improving over the course of time, advancing in its moral, cultural, and technological accomplishments.

Concepts of new historicism

New historicists, in contrast, don’t believe we have clear access to any but the most basic facts of

history. We can know, for example, that George Washington was the first American president

and that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. But our understanding of what such facts mean, of

how they fit within the complex web of competing ideologies and conflicting social, political,

and cultural agendas of the time and place in which they occurred is, for new historicists, strictly

a matter of interpretation, not fact. From this perspective, there is no such thing as a presentation

of facts; there is only interpretation. Further- more, new historicists argue that reliable
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interpretations are, for a number of reasons, difficult to produce.

Impossibility of objective analysis

Like all human beings, historians live in a particular time and place, and their views of both current and

past events are influenced in innumerable conscious and unconscious ways by their own experience

within their own culture. Historians may believe they’re being objective, but their own views of what is

right and wrong, what is civilized and uncivilized, what is important and unimportant, and the like, will

strongly influence the ways in which they interpret events.

Complexity

For new historicists, history cannot be understood simply as a linear progression of events. At any given

point in history, any given culture may be progressing in some areas and regressing in others. And any

two historians may disagree about what constitutes progress and what doesn’t, for these terms are matters

of definition. That is, history isn’t an orderly parade into a continually improving future, as many

traditional historians have believed. It’s more like an improvised dance consisting of an infinite variety of

steps, following any new route at any given moment, and having no particular goal or destination.

Individuals and groups of people may have goals, but human history does not.

Similarly, while events certainly have causes, new historicists argue that those causes are usually

multiple, complex, and difficult to analyze. One cannot make simple causal statements with any certainty.

In addition, causality is not a one way street from cause to effect. Any given event—whether it be a

political election or a children’s cartoon show—is a product of its culture, but it also affects that culture

in return. In other words, all events—including everything from the creation of an art work, to a televised

murder trial, to the persistence of or change in the condition of the poor—are shaped by and shape the

culture in which they emerge.

Subjectivity
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our subjectivity, or selfhood, is shaped by and shapes the culture into which we were born. For most new

historicists, our individual identity is not merely a product of society. Neither is it merely a product of our

own individual will and desire. Instead, individual identity and its cultural milieu inhabit, reflect, and

define each other. Their relationship is mutually constitutive (they create each other) and dynamically

unstable.

Power

Thus, according to new historicists, power does not emanate only from the top of the political and

socioeconomic structure. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose ideas have strongly

influenced the development of new historicism, power circulates in all directions, to and from all social

levels, at all times. And the vehicle by which power circulates is a never-ending proliferation of

exchange: (1) the exchange of material goods through such practices as buying and selling, bartering,

gambling, taxation, charity, and various forms of theft; (2) the exchange of people through such

institutions as marriage, adoption, kidnap- ping, and slavery; and (3) the exchange of ideas through the

various discourses a culture produces.

Discourse

A discourse is a social language created by particular cultural conditions at a particular time and place,

and it expresses a particular way of understanding human experience. For example, you may be familiar

with the discourse of modern science, the discourse of liberal humanism, the discourse of white

supremacy, the discourse of ecological awareness, the discourse of Christian fundamentalism, and the

like. Although the word discourse has roughly the same meaning as the word ideology, and the two terms

are often used interchangeably, the word discourse draws attention to the role of language as the vehicle

of ideology.

From a new historical perspective, no discourse by itself can adequately explain the complex cultural

dynamics of social power. For there is no monolithic (single, unified, universal) spirit of an age, and there
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is no adequate totalizing explanation of history (an explanation that provides a single key to all aspects of

a given culture). There is, instead, a dynamic, unstable interplay among discourses: they are always in a

state of flux, overlapping and competing with one another (or, to use new historical terminology,

negotiating exchanges of power) in any number of ways at any given point in time.

Furthermore, no discourse is permanent. Discourses wield power for those in charge, but they also

stimulate opposition to that power. This is one reason why new historicists believe that the relationship

between individual identity and society is mutually constitutive: on the whole, human beings are never

merely victims of an oppressive society, for they can find various ways to oppose authority in their

personal and public lives.

Matter of definition

What is “right, “natural,” and “normal” are matters of definition. Thus, in different cultures at different

points in history, homo- sexuality has been deemed abnormal, normal, criminal, or admirable. The same

can be said of incest, cannibalism, and women’s desire for political equality. In fact, Michel Foucault has

suggested that all definitions of “insanity,” “crime,” and sexual “perversion” are social constructs by

means of which ruling powers maintain their control. We accept these definitions as “natural” only

because they are so ingrained in our culture.

Just as definitions of social and antisocial behavior promote the power of certain individuals and groups,

so do particular versions of historical events. Analogously, had the Nazis won World War II, we would

all be reading a very different account of the war, and of the genocide of millions of Jews, than the

accounts we read in American history books today. Thus, new historicism views historical accounts as

narratives, as stories, that are inevitably biased according to the point of view, conscious or unconscious,

of those who write them. The more unaware historians are of their biases—that is, the more “objective”

they think they are—the more those biases are able to control their narratives
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Historical analysis

Historical analysis (1) cannot be objective, (2) cannot adequately demonstrate that a particular spirit of

the times or world view accounts for the complexities of any given culture, and (3) cannot adequately

demonstrate that history is linear, causal, or progressive. We can’t understand a historical event, object,

or person in isolation from the web of discourses in which it was represented because we can’t understand

it in isolation from the meanings it carried at that time. The more we isolate it, the more we will tend to

view it through the meanings of our own time and place and, perhaps, our own desire to believe that the

human race is improving with the passage of time.

For example, we might say that new historicism deconstructs the traditional opposition between history

(traditionally thought of as factual) and literature (traditionally thought of as fictional). For new

historicism considers history a text that can be interpreted the same way literary critics interpret literary

texts, and conversely, it considers literary texts cultural artifacts that can tell us something about the

interplay of discourses, the web of social meanings, operating in the time and place in which those texts

were written.

Sources

By and large, we know history only in its textual form, that is, in the form of the documents, written

statistics, legal codes, diaries, letters, speeches, tracts, news articles, and the like in which are recorded the

attitudes, policies, procedures, and events that occurred in a given time and place. That is, even when

historians base their findings on the kinds of “primary sources” listed above, rather than on the

interpretations of other historians (secondary sources), those primary sources are almost always in the

form of some sort of writing. As such, they require the same kinds of analyses literary critics perform on

literary texts. For example, historical documents can be studied in terms of their rhetorical strategies (the

stylistic devices by which texts try to achieve their purposes); they can be deconstructed to reveal the

limitations of their own ideological assumptions; and they can be examined for the purpose of revealing
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their explicit and implicit patriarchal, racist, and homophobic agendas. In addition, historical accounts—

secondary sources, written during the period in question or at a later date—can be analyzed in the same

manner.

In other words, new historicists consider both primary and secondary sources of historical information

forms of narrative. Both tell some kind of story, and therefore those stories can be analyzed using the

tools of literary criticism. Indeed, we might say that in bringing to the foreground the suppressed

historical narratives of marginalized groups—such as women, people of color, the poor, the working

class, gay men and lesbians, prisoners, the inhabitants of mental institutions, and so on—new historicism

has deconstructed the white, male, Anglo-European historical narrative to reveal its disturbing, hidden

subtext: the experiences of those peoples it has oppressed in order to maintain the dominance that allowed

it to control what most Americans know about history.

A plurality of voices, including an equal representation of historical narratives from all groups, helps

ensure that a master narrative—a narrative told from a single cultural point of view that, nevertheless,

presumes to offer the only accurate version of history—will no longer control our historical

understanding. At this point in time, we still do not have an equal representation of historical narratives

from all groups. And even as the historical narratives of some groups are becoming more and more

numerous, such as those of women and of people of color, those narratives generally do not receive the

same kind of attention as patriarchal Anglo-European narratives do in the classroom, where most of us

learn about history. Therefore, new historicism tries to promote the development of and gain attention for

the histories of marginalized peoples.

A plurality of historical voices also tends to raise issues that new historicism considers important, such as

how ideology operates in the formation of personal and group identity, how a culture’s perception of itself

(for example, Americans’ belief that they are rugged individualists) influences its political, legal, and

social policies and customs, and how power circulates in a given culture.

The ways in which history is a text that is interpreted by different cultures to fit the ideological needs of
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their own power structures, which is a new historical concern. In this context, new historicism might be

defined as the history of stories cultures tell themselves about them- selves. Or, as a corrective to some

traditional historical accounts, new historicism might be defined as the history of lies cultures tell

themselves. Thus, there is no history, in the traditional sense of the term. There are only representations of

history.

Thick Description

Thick description attempts, through close, detailed examination of a given cultural production—such as

birthing practices, ritual ceremonies, games, penal codes, works of art, copyright laws, and the like—to

discover the meanings that particular cultural production had for the people in whose community it

occurred and to reveal the social conventions, cultural codes, and ways of seeing the world that gave that

production those meanings. Thus, thick description is not a search for facts but a search for meanings,

and as the examples of cultural productions listed above illustrate, thick description focuses on the

personal side of history—the history of family dynamics, of leisure activities, of sexual practices, of

childrearing customs—as much as or more than on such traditional historical topics as military campaigns

and the passage of laws. Indeed, because traditional historicism tended to ignore or marginalize private

life as subjective and irrelevant, new historicism tries to compensate for this omission by bringing issues

concerned with private life into the foreground of historical inquiry.

Self-Positioning

The inevitability of personal bias makes it imperative that new historicists be as aware of and as forthright

as possible about their own psychological and ideological positions relative to the material they analyze

so that their readers can have some idea of the human “lens” through which they are viewing the

historical issues at hand. This practice is called self- positioning.

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1. The writing of history is a matter of interpretations, not facts. Thus, all historical accounts are

narratives and can be analyzed using many of the tools used by literary critics to analyze

narrative.

2. History is neither linear (it does not proceed neatly from cause A to effect B and from cause B

to effect C) nor progressive (the human species is not steadily improving over the course of time).

3. Power is never wholly confined to a single person or a single level of society. Rather, power

circulates in a culture through exchanges of material goods, exchanges of human beings, and,

most important for literary critics as we’ll see below, exchanges of ideas through the various

discourses a culture produces.

4. There is no monolithic (single, unified, universal) spirit of an age, and there is no adequate

totalizing explanation of history (an explanation that provides a single key to all aspects of a

given culture). There is only a dynamic, unstable interplay among discourses, the meanings of

which the historian can try to analyze, though that analysis will always be incomplete, accounting

for only a part of the historical picture.

5. Personal identity—like historical events, texts, and artifacts—is shaped by and shapes the

culture in which it emerges. Thus, cultural categories such as normal and abnormal, sane and

insane, are matters of definition..

6. All historical analysis is unavoidably subjective. Historians must therefore reveal the ways in

which they know they have been positioned, by their own cultural experience, to interpret history.

New Historicism and Literature

The traditional literary criticism dominated literary studies in the nineteenth century and the early

decades of the twentieth, confined itself largely to studies of the author’s life, in order to discover his or

her intentions in writing the work, or to studies of the historical period in which the work was written, in
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order to reveal the spirit of the age, which the text was then shown to embody. For traditional literary

historians, literature existed in a purely subjective realm, unlike history, which consisted of objectively

discernible facts. Therefore, literature could never be interpreted to mean anything that history didn’t

authorize it to mean.

Role of New Criticism

New Criticism, which dethroned traditional historical criticism and controlled literary studies from the

1940s to the 1960s, rejected traditional historicism’s approach to literature. For the New Critics, the only

thing literary historians could offer was interesting background material about literary works. The

understanding of a text’s meaning, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with history, the New Critics

argued, because great literary works are timeless, autonomous (self-sufficient) art objects that exist in a

realm beyond history. As a result of New Critical dominance, the historical study of literature faded into

the background and tried to content itself with the tasks New Criticism deemed its proper work: for

example, providing background material on authors’ lives and times—which would not, however, be used

to interpret their works—and preserving, through the provision of accurate editions of revered works, the

canon of great literature.

New historicism, which emerged in the late 1970s, rejects both traditional historicism’s marginalization of

literature and New Criticism’s enshrinement of the literary text in a timeless dimension beyond history.

Rather, literary texts are cultural artifacts that can tell us something about the interplay of discourses, the

web of social meanings, operating in the time and place in which the text was written. And they can do so

because the literary text is itself part of the interplay of discourses, a thread in the dynamic web of social

meaning. For new historicism, the literary text and the historical situation from which it emerged are

equally important because text (the literary work) and context (the historical conditions that produced it)

are mutually constitutive: they create each other. Like the dynamic interplay between individual identity

and society, literary texts shape and are shaped by their historical contexts.

New historicism is concerned not with historical events as events, but with the ways in which events are
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interpreted, with historical discourses, with ways of seeing the world and modes of meaning.

We can’t really know exactly what happened at any given point in history, but we can know what the

people involved believed happened—we can know from their own accounts the various ways in which

they interpreted their experience—and we can interpret those interpretations.

For new historical literary critics, then, the literary text, through its representation of human experience at

a given time and place, is an interpretation of history. As such, the literary text maps the discourses

circulating at the time it was written and is itself one of those discourses. That is, the literary text shaped

and was shaped by the discourses circulating in the culture in which it was produced. Likewise, our

interpretations of literature shape and are shaped by the culture in which we live.