The Importance Of Historicism In Literature

History and literature were once thought of as separate entities. The two were believed to have an invisible barrier between them, separating fact from fiction. However, history is often written in order to preserve it for future generations, this means that history can be a form of literature. Historians decide what they write, what they abolish and what version of events they portray. Therefore, as Hayden White a new historicist, would say historians are “storytellers who make choices about which events to emphasise, where to attribute causes, and so forth” (Stevens 167). The ideology viewing historians as authors of literature shows that history and literature are intrinsically linked, and this is the belief of those who practice new historicism.

They no longer were on “opposite sides of a pendulum” and according to Lai, were seen as a “web-like crisscrossing network,” which “obliterated the boundaries between text and context and between history and fiction” (Lai 2). In D.G Myers’ blog , he states that the times had changed and there was an overall wish to move beyond a “narrowly ‘formalistic’ or ‘text-centered’ approach to literature” (Myers “The New Historicism in Literary Study”). This paved the way for new historicism to be found in the 1980’s as a movement “unified by its disdain for literary formalism” (Myers). New historicism first emerged in the Renaissance studies field and is a term closely associated with Stephen Greenblatt; “the leading proponent of “New Historicism”” (Greenblatt 2250). He was inspired by Michel Foucault’s “historical investigations of medical and penal institutions and his theoretical understandings of power,” which make up a large sum of his work (2250). In 1982, Greenblatt constructed new historicism to describe how he interpreted Renaissance texts, such as the works of

Therefore, it could be contested that new historicism is not as ‘new’ as its name suggests. New historicism can be viewed as yet another attempt at bonding literature and history. However, the application of new historicism to literary texts can be applied more successfully than previously adopted movements, as will be demonstrated further in this essay. Although new historicism must be applied to literature, like a theory, Stephen Greenblatt saw it as an “ostensibly untheorised practice” (Colebrook 23). He objected the idea of new historicism as a theory, stating that it actually was “no doctrine at all” (24). Accepting Greenblatt’s request, new historicism, in this essay, shall be described as a ‘literary movement’ or a literary