Through the Literary Looking
Glass: Critical Theory in Practice
1301
New Historicism
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A text can be better understood if one takes the time to investigate the background
of its setting, or the life and time of the author.
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New historicist readers use literature as a tool to interrogate society- more
specifically, the society in which it was written.
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New historicists are more interested in the time period that produced the novel,
rather than the time period in which it is set.
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A new historicist critic would read a text aiming to explore the mechanisms whereby
by power structures and societal conventions are upheld in literature, and how
literature is thus used as a tool for socialisation.
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A new historicist reading of a novel will always encompass more than the novel itself.
It involves the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, of the same historical
period.
New Historicism
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New Historicists are at least as interested in non-literary, i.e. factual, texts from the
same period as the literary text they are reading, e.g. diaries, newspapers, letters,
government documents…
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New historicism is firmly anti-establishment, always on the side of liberal ideals of
personal freedom and accepting and celebrating all forms of difference and
‘deviance’.
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At the same time, though, it seems simultaneously to despair of the survival of these
in the face of the power of the repressive state, which is constantly revealed as able
to penetrate and taint the most intimate areas of personal life.
New Historicism
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New historicism insists that to understand a literary piece, we need to understand the
author's biography and social background, ideas circulating at the time, and the cultural
surroundings.
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New historicism seeks to find meaning in a text by considering the work within the
framework of the prevailing ideas and assumptions of its historical era. New historicists
concern themselves with the political function of literature and with the concept of power,
the intricate means by which cultures produce and reproduce themselves.
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In other words, literary works may or may not tell us about various factual aspects of the
world from which they emerge, but they will tell us about prevailing ways of thinking at the
time: ideas of social organization, prejudices, taboos, etc.
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Michael Foucault, a French philosopher, developed the theory and was concerned with the
persuasiveness and circulation, through social orders, of what he calls power. Power is the
way in which knowledge circulates within a culture. The way that what we think is
appropriate to think is distributed by largely unseen forces in a social network. Power is
how certain forms of knowledge, which are not necessarily true, come to exist in certain
places.
New Historicism
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It is through discourse that power circulates knowledge. Literature is discourse.
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The relationship between history and discourse/literature is reciprocal. History conditions
what literature can say.
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But, by the same token there is a capacity for discourse/literature to circulate knowledge and
therefore affect history.
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The significance of a text is the power in which it has invested in it and the knowledge it
circulates.
How new Historicist analysis works
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read one or two co-texts alongside the literary text, conducting a ‘parallel’ reading so
as to re-evaluate the historical context of the text and gain a new understanding of
the discursive practices at the time.
Key characteristics of New Historicism:
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Refusing to privilege the literary over the non-literary. It is an analysis in which the
two are weighted equally, and constantly inform and interrogate one another.
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Placing the literary text within the ‘frame’ of a non-literary text.
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Emphasising the extent of ‘thought control’ in society, so that the state is seen as a
monolithic structure and change becomes almost impossible.
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Undertaking intensive ‘close reading’ of non-literary texts.
Applying New Historicism
Find non-literary materials that can be read alongside it. These could be:
• Any non-fiction book published around the same time period as the original text.
• Biography
• Excerpts from the media at the time
• Books of private diaries or letters
• Accounts of speeches given
• Government records
• History textbooks or historical investigations of that period
When conducting your search use the following resources:
• School and public library
• University library
• Use the internet to find newspaper archives
• Wikipedia has a useful list of online newspaper archives
• Consult with the history department
Once you have found your co-text (s), read these and your literary text with the following
principles in mind:
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How does the content and the style of the text display the discursive practices (the
analysis of particular institutions and their ways of establishing orders of truth, or what
is accepted as ‘reality’ in a given society) of society at the time?
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What were the possible aims of these discursive practices?
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Who held most knowledge and power at the time?
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Through what methods are knowledge and power held or withheld in the text?
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In what ways does the literary text mirror the ‘reality’ of the time?
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In what ways could literature be seen to shape history?
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In what ways was history shaped by literature?
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
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We will be conducting research into the period in which our first literary topic, 1984,
was written. During your research you will be focusing on the following questions:
1. What were the major concerns of society?
2. What were the greatest aims of individuals within the society?
3. What were some common individual concerns, preoccupations or interests?
4. How was society governed? What were some of the laws?
5. How were these laws enforces?
6. How did roles differ for men or women?
7. How did roles differ for member of the ruling class?