Basic Principles of New Historicism
New Historicism is a branch of literary theory that concerns itself with historical events displayed in the text, how said events are viewed by the author or characters, events in the text that represent the historical period of the author, and how texts (fictional and nonfictional) from a given period influence each other. The founder of this school of literary theory is Stephen Greenblatt who also coined the name. Stephen Greenblatt is famous for his studies on Shakespeare; and in relation to the theory, he is of the idea that texts are influenced by the historical period they are written in and not the time period they are written about. This study has been criticized by several critics for being a "reduced" version of Historical Criticism. Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia were among many critics who did not favor the idea. Michel Foucault's notion of the "episteme" (from The Order of Things) was seen to be very similar to the principles of New Historicism. "Episteme" suggests that cultural and political ideas determine the body of knowledge at any given time. For example, we wouldn't know exactly what people in the 1700s thought. If we read any work from that period, we would not have a full understanding of that work unless we lived in that era and really understood their culture. New Historicism suggests that we interpret texts based on the cultural practices we come from. Texts, on the one hand, are products of the historical moments they were written in. On the other hand, historical study is subjective. That is to say, New Historicists "interest themselves in the interpretative constructions which the members of a society or culture apply to their experience."
Analysis
The four memoirs on this blog are all written in March 2014, in a century that still feels most of its past century's influences, such that many 20th century writers and thinkers, like Michel Foucault and Ayn Rand to name a few, are still widely read today.
The background of these authors are not known; but common themes among the four are (1) the love for writing, (2) the need for writing, (3) the inseparability of the writer from her writing, and (4) a never-ending "love affair" with writing. The art of writing, for the longest time, was always seen as a pleasurable thing to do, if not euphoric. Different writers feel differently about their writing; but it would be safe to say that writing is indeed a lifelong "career"--one in which there is no retirement age. In short, once a person proclaims himself a writer, he will always and forever be a writer from that moment on, no matter how awful his writings or distressing his writing habits.
Following the 20th century's new face of memoir-writing, these four memoirs that dealt with "writinghood" were written by the authors themselves. Each author talked about why they write, what writing meant to them, how writing is able to bring them comfort and clarity, and why they enjoy writing. Other types of memoirs would be about a one's personal experiences or about one's experiences with other people, but these memoirs, written about their own writing life, makes for a really unique theme.
Sources:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/
http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/new.hist.html
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/09/
No comments:
Post a Comment