Literature and History (2):
The Use of History in Literary
Criticism
Literary History, New Criticism and
New Historicism
Literary Criticism: History (3)–
From New Criticism to New Historicism
Q & A (1)
Your questions?
wk 1: Identity and History—what and why?
wk 2: Historical methods


Not just used by historians and fiction writers, but
literary critics, popular culture and everyone of us.
They are ways of knowing/representing our past– as
permanent present, as a magical realm, as
logical/progressive development, catastrophic, or as
fractured textual reconstruction.
wk 3: New Historicism, History, Time and
Traumatic Memories
Q & A (1)
Quiz (1)
What are the historical methods used by
historiography and/or historical novel/film
and how can they be critiqued?
 credibility (‘facts & evidence,’ authoritative
& neutral tone and the past tense); 
subjective selection
 embodiment (witness account, the use of
narrative and other techniques)  subjective
(biased) and eliminating gaps
 totalization (generalizations of a period, a
people or a society)  excluding and erasing
individual differences and exceptions.
Outline
Literary History – another example of
traditional historicism
New Criticism e.g. Sonnet 29
New Historicism & Foucault
Literary History
p. 104 – periodization 歷史斷代
segmenting the flow of history into some big
chunks. (classification as a way of knowing the
past, but . . . )
 homogenizing and totalization (one period is seen
to have a set of characteristics)
(e.g. p. 108-109; 111; Neo-Classical poetry,
Romantic Poetry, Victorian Novel and Poetry 唐詩、
宋詞、元曲、明小說)
Aren’t there exceptions to these generalizations?
e.g. Jane Austin—Romantic, or Victorian, 19th
century ‘poetess’ (ignored) vs. the Big Six
 Forming a Canon 典律; e.g. The Great Tradition
(1948) by F. R. Leavis

Q & A (2)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Quiz (2)
How is the reading of “Rip Van Winkle”
related to what we discussed?
A new critical reading (close analysis of form
and content to produce a unified meaning)
It uses historical methods (as frames).
It is involved in contemporary history in a
contradictory way.
The story is apparently a fantasy out of time
and space (and thus only apparently similar
to many time/space travel stories), but it
says a lot about the time of American
Independence.
From New Criticism to New
Historicism
-- From Work to Text
Two different views of a literary
work
1. A work: Autonomous, unified in
meaning; the meaning remains
stable and can be transmitted
through time and space;  New
Criticism or Formalism
2. A text: textualized, interacting with
the other texts around it in the
historical context(s) it is written and
read.  New Historicism & Poststructuralism
Image source: http://valerie6.myweb.uga.edu/intertextuality.html
Review:
New Criticism: Major Views
A poem is autonomous, with an
ontological status.
Intentional Fallacy,
Affective Fallacy
Poetry offers a different kind of truth
(poetic truth) than science.
Heresy of Paraphrase (詩不可以被翻譯)
Review:
New Criticism: Major Views
Organic unity
– with the parts interrelated and
forming a wholeness;
-- “Form is content; content is form.”
Review:
New Criticism: Methodology -- Poetry
Parts
Figurative language,
Denotations,
connotations
and etymological roots
Allusions
Prosody
Relationships
Among the various
elements
Whole
Themes
pattern, tension,
ambiguities,
paradox,
contradictions
Sonnet 29
(textbook p. 112)
What is the central meaning? How is
the “I” presented?
How is it supported by the poetic
techniques in the poem?
Pattern: Variation or repetition? Is
there tension formed and solved? Are
there paradoxes, ambiguities, etc.?
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
Sonnet 29 – a new critical
reading
central meaning – The speaker transcends his
state of depression by thinking of his lover.
“I” –the speaker (or any man); ‘thee’ his lover
Tension (or transition): “Yet” 3rd quartrain.
Ambiguities
– “thy sweet love remember'd “  in the mind
(of an artist) but not owned;
-- “state”
Sonnet 29 –analyzed—
syntax//meaning
1.the 1st two quatrains: fragmentary syntax, with
“I” deeply buried in it.
2. The 1st quatrain: great distance between the sky
and the speaker
3.The 2nd quatrain: circular or awk syntax,
repetition of ‘like’
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Sonnet 29 –analyzed—
syntax//meaning
3rd quatrain and couplet:
1.the main clause, more continuous (with fewer
pauses), to suggest the fast change of the
speaker’s state.
2. smooth syntax, rhythmic (iambic) and mellifluous
sounds  suggesting the rise of his state.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
Sonnet 29 –analyzed -- rhymes
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
musical
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
Sonnet 29 – ambiguities?
Ambiguities
– “thy sweet love remember'd “  not present?
Nor reciprocated?
--(textbook p. 114-15) “state” – interpreted as
mental state but not social state.
The difference here is syntactic.
In Booth’s version both ‘Lark’ and ‘my state’ sing hymns at
Heaven’s gate.
In the quarto version only ‘my state’ sings, having arisen
‘from sullen earth’. ‘My state’ is subject, ‘from sullen earth’
is an adjunct, ‘sings’ is the main verb, and ‘at Heavens
gate’ in another adjunct (preposition-headed).
Sonnet 29 – a New Historicist
Reading
comparing two versions: John Barrrel
-- “I have claimed that much of the pathos of the poem
derives from the narrator’s simultaneous desire and
inability to escape from the limiting conditions of earth
and perhaps of discourse; and if the narrator’s state
can do all that the lark can do, that source of meaning
and pathos is abolished.”
-- “The narrator can find no words to assert the
transcendent power of true love which cannot be
interpreted as making a request for a couple of quid一
磅金幣 ” (qtd Taylor 71)  -- “thy” – the lover or the
patron who offers financial support?
New Criticism Historicized:
The theories after New Criticism: Five Main
Points
Politics is pervasive (implying power relations), 任
何事情都是政治的，
Language is constructive (but not reflective) of
reality, 語言為建構，
Truth is provisional (or contingent, no universal,
non-changing truth), 真理是臨時建構，
Meaning is contingent (context is important
determinant of meanings), 意義是因時／地制定
的，
Universal human nature is a myth 人性的普遍性是
虛構的.
Do you agree?
New Criticism  New Historicism
History is brought back to literary studies and literature decentered. Both are in a network of text.
The assumptions of history – influenced by Michel Foucault.
Textbook 112—
‘New Historicists’-- see history not in terms of discrete
episodes forming an homogeneous whole, but as fractured,
subjective, and above all textual.
Foucault –”sees literature as just another discourse
manipulated through and by a culture’s power struggles.
Foucault’s historicist perspective is one based on a
suspicion of truth rather than a presumption of truth. Thus
any historical representation is not unified, truthful and
coherent, but contingent, unstable and partial.”
New Historicism: principles
(textbook) 115
Every expressive act (speech or text) is embedded
in a network of material practices (production of
texts or other types of productions); participate in
the economy they describe.
Language as context: Every act of unmasking,
critiquing, and opposition uses the tools it
condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it
exposes; (e.g. The Tempest, Midnight’s Children, etc.)
Literature de-centered: That literary and nonliterary texts circulate inseparably;
Truth is provisional; human nature, a myth. No
discourse,. . . gives access to unchanging truths,
nor expresses inalterable human nature (more
later)
New Historicism: methods
Investigates three areas of concern:
1. the life of the author;
2. the social rules or power relations found within a
text;
3. The work’s historical situation (of production and
circulation) in the text.
 Blurring the boundaries between text and context.
Avoiding sweeping generalization of a text or
a historical period, a new historicist pays
close attention to the conflicts and the
apparently insignificant details in history as
well as the text.
New Historicism: examples
the analyses of “Rip Van Winkle” Sonnet 29.
p. 123 – an anecdote (of a doctor’s decision
that the maid, Marie, is a man) is used to
interpret Twelfth Night.
 wantonness of language  language
embodied
The prefaces to Wordsworth’s Lyrical
Ballads, as opposed to contemporary literary
reviews and capitalist system, are used to
explain his views on poetry.
Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)
Discourse, Power and Subjectivity
Image
source
Foucault (1): Outline
Discourse
1.
2.
3.
Definition
“What is an Author?”
Power and Knowledge
(Truth)  ‘effective history’
Power
Discipline & Punish
Discourse (論述): Definition
Discourse is "a group of statements which
provide a language for talking about ...a
particular topic at a particular historical
moment.“  How is Power involved?
Discursive formation over time --three major
procedures:
Definition & Prohibition  defining statements &
Rules about the “sayable” and “thinkable”
Division and rejection;  subject positions;
exclusion of other statements
Opposition between false and true 
Authority/Power of knowledge (Truth)
Discursive practices (material practices) within
institutions. (e.g. the discourse of 尊師重道）
Stop and Think: Discourse, “Truth” &
Power
What discourse, or its “the regime of truth,”
makes the following statements valid?
Neurosis is a mental illness usually caused by
sexual repression.
Masturbation causes sexual impotence.
Yellow is beautiful.
一個孩子恰恰好，兩個不嫌多
How is ‘author’ related to discourses?
What is an Author?
The author is not a creator of his own
work. He is a ‘label’ put on a group of
work by and related to him.
The author function: providing to ‘his’
discourse
a. Value, b. Coherence,
c. Stylistic unity, d. a historical figure
Literary Discourse:
implications
No fixed boundaries between literature and
other social practices;
The author is not the creator of his work.
He serves as a label to put on a group of
works related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth
discourse)
Defining some subject positions (of the
author, the reader, etc.) (to be discussed
more later)
Power and Knowledge/Truth
power
– both repressive, controlling and productive
-- not just top-down; it circulates, working in
multiple direction like “capillary 毛細管
movement.”
-- producing “Truth” – with a discursive
formation sustaining a regime of truth.
Power and Knowledge/Truth (2)
Since truth is provisionally produced by
power in its system, Foucault argues for
production of ‘effective history’ (117)
e.g. the operation of power in a
hospital –exertion of power through
spatial arrangement, the doctor’s
examination, the posters, pamphlets,
the different examination room,
registration system, pharmacy,
insurance co., etc.
Discipline and Punish
Main purpose -- not so much the
“birth of the prison” as “disciplinary
technology”
Or the carceral (監獄的) forms of
discipline which exercise over
individual a perpetual series of
observation and modes of control of
conduct.
Discipline and Punish (2)
B. Penopticon
A circular building with the
central control tower  control
internalized.
References
Miller, Peter. Domination & Power.
Routledge: 12/01/1987.