This question asks us two things. Firstly, it asks us what is distinctive about the New Historicist approaches to literature, so this implies explaining the New Historicist approach carefully and thoroughly. It also asks what is particularly new about the New Historicist approach to literature. This implies that the Old Historicist approach needs to be compared with the new. The Historicist approach to literature was prior to a style called ‘The New Criticism’, which is post ‘New Historicist’. This ‘New Criticism’ therefore also needs some explaining. I will refer to the texts that I have been reading during this module in order to give examples of these different types of criticism.

Historicist criticism is generally considered as a type of criticism that was used in the period prior to the 1940’s. It was characterised by its attention to the era or historical surroundings that the piece of work was written in. Historical criticism looks for the truth about the past in the text and the information it provides about the people and events that it describes in their historical context. A goo

“…there is something inherent in the act of criticism itself which makes it fail even on its own terms; makes it fail, that is, fully to explicate and illuminate works of art”

Basically, the New Historicist view is different from the old one because it is in more depth. It studies the text closely and carefully, takes into consideration the form and technicalities of the text to a moderate extent and recognises that history is much more complicated than was previously thought. It examines social structures in relation to literature and vice versa. It recognises that history must be interpreted and that it is not just straightforward. The problem with living in a time where one type of criticism is accepted is that you cannot see the problems with it from within the society because you are so used to it.

The assumption that this type of criticism makes is that history is a ‘knowable’ organised set of events. As we all know, history is complicated beyond belief. It is always hard to try and figure out what has really happened and be positive about it in any historical research. Historicism assumes that history somehow influences the literature that is produced at the time and therefore the piece can be understood from merely studying the surroundings of the author of the piece. People who assumed that a work was merely a reflection of the author’s life allegedly brought this method to some ridiculous lengths. This was even sometimes brought to the point that the text was not even read!

Another Old Historicist view is that history influences and shapes literature. The New Historicist view is that history does shape literature, but literature also shapes history as well. It goes on to say that literature can be distorted by literature, but sometimes there is no connection.

Some topics in this essay:
, Historical Criticism, Jane Eyre, William Shakespeare’s, Charlotte Bronte, Basically Historicist, North America, Historicism Historical, piece art, historicist view, type criticism, historical criticism, historicist approach, historical background, historicist approaches literature, art judged, history complicated, view history, historicist view book, technical achievements, organised set events, politics power ideology, historicist view history,