New Historicism

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New HistoricismPoetics of Culture

• A new Approach on Literature

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Seminar Poetic
Change Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, SoSe
2007 Dozent Prof. Dr. Martin Klepper Referenten
Anne-Marie Storch, Alexander Florin, 19.06.2007
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New Historicism Theories
New Historicism
The Creator
The Surrounding
Marxist History Realism, Romantic Canon
Biographistic Psycho-Analysis Genius
The Text
Structuralism Formalism Reader-Centrism
Intertextuality
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New Historicism Stephen Jay Greenblatt ( Nov
7th, 1943)
literary critic, theorist and scholar one of
the founders of New Historicism, a set of
critical practices that he often refers to as
cultural poetics influential since early
1980s when he introduced the term wrote and
edited numerous books and articles relevant to
new historicism, the study of culture,
Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies
considered expert in these fields most popular
work is Will in the World, a Shakespeare-biography
(on NY-Times-Bestseller-list for nine
weeks) co-founded literary-cultural journal
Representations, which publishes articles by new
historicists educated at Yale University (B.A.
1964, M.phil 1968, Ph.d. 1969)and Pembroke
College, Cambridge (B.A. 1966, M.A.
1968) taught at University of California,
Berkeley and Harvard University http//en.wikiped
ia.org/wiki/Stephen_Greenblatt
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New Historicism Circulation in Space
Some factors at a certain point of time
influencing the creation of a text
The Text
Author
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New Historicism Circulation in Space
space the small fraction of time in which
the text is created social currency
represents the connection of the author to other
people, classes, groups, etc. the culture of a
space is formed by the previous spaces in
time the creator of a text is one of its
connections to its space mimesis of
realityallusion, symbolization, allegorization,
representation relation between social and
aesthetic discourse features of Emergence
the whole is more than the sum of its parts
the interaction of simple elements lead to
complex, unpredictable results
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New Historicism Circulation in Space Problems
social currency focuses on the author or
history-moment its impossible to take all
factors evenly into consideration in retrospect
its hard to fully reconstruct the conditions of
a works creation a forecast is
impossible literature-studies and
culture-studies become inseparable scholars are
forced to focus on one epoch or author or text
and will hardly ever fully reach the complete
competence the concept of a canon becomes
hard to agree upon everything becomes
relative Solutions to some Problems will be
provided later.
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New Historicism Circulation in Time
time the order of spaces in which texts are
created no process is uni-directional, transfer
of material from one discourse to another occur
in oscillatory manner negotiations in time
tradition, inheritance, transmission,
alteration, modification, reproduction as a
rule there is very little pure invention in
culture recursive character of social life and
language social energytexts (charged with
social energy) produce resonance with their
cultural environment gt text is embedded in a
network of social circulation art, history, and
literature are always repetitive negation of
noveltyunsettling circulation of materials and
discourses (the heart of modern aesthetic
practice)
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New Historicism Greenblatts Consequences
1. No appeals to genius as the sole origin 2. No
motiveless creation 3. No transcendent or
timeless or unchanging representation 4. No
autonomous artifacts 5. No expression without an
origin and an object a from and for 6. No art
without social energy 7. No spontaneous
generation of social energy a) Mimesis is always
accompanied by negotiation and exchange. b) The
exchanges to which art is a party may involve any
kind of currency money is only one kind. c) The
agents may appear to be individuals, but are
themselves the products of collective exchange.
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New Historicism In a Nutshell
All Theories
Circles in Space
all factors at a given time and their
interaction social currency Emergence
no master-discourse no claim for exclusiveness
Circles in Time
the multiple interconnections of
spaces social energy oscillation
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New Historicism Pragmatic Consequences
fragmentary viewinstead of one ultimate
interpretation which is an illusionary
exploitation of the unitary work no claim for
universalityevery work develops its greatness on
the background of the epoch that it evolved
from awareness of own perspective drawing
from one partiality to a bigger fragment, which
can always be related back to a bigger unit
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New Historicism Questions
What follows from New Historicism concerning
poetic change? What do we make out of E. A.
Poes Raven under the new approach? What is
the social energy that is being circulated?
anything that society produces can circulate,
until it is excluded from circulation Why can
there be no single method, no overall picture, no
exhaustive and definite cultural politics?
What do we make of Greenblatt saying the
ratio between the theater and the world, even at
its most stable and unchallenged moments, was
never perfectly taken for granted, that is,
experienced as something wholly natural and
self-evident?
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New Historicism The End
This presentation is online available
at www.zanjero.de/literatur/newhist/