New Historicism
Alex Carpenter, Anne Stoessel, Kevin Koste, Nick Lau and Aidan Strayer
The Four Tenets:
When applying new historicism to a text,
1. Juxtapose the literary and nonliterary texts; giving equal weight to each.
2. View the literary text independent from it’s previous academic interpretations
3. Focus interpretation on:
3.1. The power of government and how it is maintained
3.2. Patriarchal structure and its perpetuation
3.3. Colonization and its accompanying ideas
4. Give attention to post-structuralist views of literary theory
History
- Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) is regarded as the beginning of New Historicism
- However, new historicist methods began to appear in the 1970s, such as J.W. Lever’s The Tragedy of State: A Study of Jacobean Drama (1971).
- These pieces and others like them are characterized as New Historicist due to how they interpret literary texts alongside non-literary texts ― not merely treating the non-literary as background information.
Guided Practice with Sleeping Beauty
“In a mossy glen, Briar Rose danced and sang with her friends, the birds and the animals. She told them of her beautiful dream about meeting a tall handsome stranger and falling in love” (Teitelbaum 12).
Advertisement of the 1950’s
New Historicism
ReplyDeleteNicole Feldman, Megan Garrity, Lauren Litz, Liam Martin, Emily Morra Madison Schmitt, and Bianca Sciocchetti
History:
Term coined by the American critic Stephen Greenblatt in 1980
Old Historicism combined historical framework with the practice of ‘close reading’ and the analysis of ‘patterns of imagery’
The practice of giving ‘equal weighting’ to literary and non-literary material is the primary difference between New and Old Historicisms.
New historicism is a historicist rather than a historical movement. It is interested in history as represented in written documents.
Tenets:
Method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same period
Literary and non-literary texts are given the same weight
viewed equally and compared to gain insight into society as well as the text-a;so use information about the time period to challenge the ideas set forth in the literary text
Places a literary text within a frame of a non-literary text
Cite factual evidence to support interpretation
Look at how the economy or politics of a time period impact society
Accepts Derrida’s view of thrice processed meaning that everything in the past is only available to us in textualized form because it has evolved as societal and linguistic conventions change.
Seeing the literary and non-literary components together allow the reader to create a dimensional context
Read texts not based on previous notions about the time, they rediscover history as they read the text and compare it to non-literary texts
Ask “How has the event been interpreted?” and “What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?”
Non literary text- an advertisement, a tax report, eye witness account, etc that shows the quality of life rather than the history
Literary text- a piece of literature that we would study in an english class
Implications:
According to New Historicists we don't have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history
Our understanding of what these facts mean is a matter of interpretation, not fact
We are subjective interpreters of what we observe and this cannot be changed
All human systems are symbolic and subject to the rules of language
There is no way to position oneself as an observer whose interpretation is outside of textuality
Application of New Historicism to Sleeping Beauty:
Sleeping Beauty was released in 1959
It can analyzed side by side with advertisements of the 1950s and 60s to examine the gender roles, values, and stereotypes of the time period
Fairies gave her gifts of beauty and song
Physical qualities valued over intellect and personality
Married Phillip after singing one song together- goal in life was to meet a man and marry him
She is helpless princess who cannot save herself