Research Guides
Literary Research: New Historicism
Literary Theory and Criticism
What is New Historicism?
"New Historicism reopened the interpretation of literature to the social, political, and historical milieu that produced it. To a New Historicist, literature is not the record of a single mind, but the end product of a particular cultural moment. New Historicists look at literature alongside other cultural products of a particular historical period to illustrate how concepts, attitudes, and ideologies operated across a broader cultural spectrum that is not exclusively literary. In addition to analyzing the impact of historical context and ideology, New Historicists also acknowledge that their own criticism contains biases that derive from their historical position and ideology. Because it is impossible to escape one’s own “historicity,” the meaning of a text is fluid, not fixed. New Historicists attempt to situate artistic texts both as products of a historical context and as the means to understand cultural and intellectual history."
Brief Overviews:
- New Historicism/Cultural Poetics (Literary Theory Handbook)
- New Historicism (The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism)
- New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (A Companion to Literary Theory)
Notable Scholars:
- Greenblatt, Stephen, and Michael Payne. The Greenblatt Reader. Blackwell Pub., 2005.
- Greenblatt, Stephen. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. Routledge, 1990.
- Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
- Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. University of California Press, 1988.
- Montrose, Louis Adrian. “‘Eliza, Queene of Shepheardes,’ and the Pastoral of Power.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 10, no. 2, 1980, pp. 153–82.
- Montrose, Louis Adrian. “New Historicisms.” In Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, 392–418. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1992.
- White, Hayden. “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact.” Clio, vol. 3, no. 3, 1974, pp. 277–303.
- White, Hayden V. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
- White, Hayden V. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Introductions & Anthologies
The New Historicism ReaderThe New Historicism Reader documents the New Historicists' multiplex achievement, spanning Renaissance and Reagan studies, American realism, English romanticism, gender studies, feminism, and communications and rhetoric.
New Historicism and Cultural MaterialismIn this study, John Brannigan explains the development of new historicism and cultural materialism and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices... Brannigan explores the potential future of the theories and the debates surrounding their controversial position in literary studies.
Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory: New Historicism and Cultural MaterialismIn the 30 years since the publication of Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning overthrew traditional modes of Shakespeare criticism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have rapidly become the dominant modes for studying and writing about the Bard. This comprehensive guide introduces students to the key writers, texts and ideas of contemporary Shakespeare criticism and alternatives to new historicist and cultural materialist approaches suggested by a range of dissenters including evolutionary critics, historical formalists and advocates of 'the new aestheticism', and the more politically active presentists.
Also see other recent eBooks discussing or using new historicism in literature and scholar-recommended sources on new historicism and Hayden White via Oxford Bibliographies.
Definition from: "New Historicism." Glossary of Poetic Terms. Poetry Foundation.(20 July 2023)