New Historicism, as a contextual approach to literary criticism and literary theory, arose in the 1990s. Scholars of Renaissance literature particularly associate it with the work of Stephen Greenblatt; another group of New Historicist critics write about Romanticism.

New Historicist scholars begin their analysis of literary texts by attempting to look at what other texts -- both literary and non-literary -- a public could access at the time of writing, and what the author of the original text might have read. They also, however, attempt to relate texts to the political and socio-economic circumstances in which they originated. For example, a well-known New Historicist reading examines the travellers' tales and geographical works available to William Shakespeare about the discovery of the 'New World' (i.e. North America), and relates them to his play The Tempest. Therefore, this reading argues, we should interpret Shakespeare's play less as a 'timeless' literary creation and more as a product of the context in which it appeared (see contextualism, thick description), and should see it as contributing to contemporary debates about colonialism.

Clearly, in its historicism and in its political interpretations, New Historicism owes something to Marxism. But whereas Marxism (at least in its cruder forms) tended to see literature as part of a 'superstructure' in which the economic 'base' (i.e. material relations of production) manifested itself, New Historicist thinkers tend to take a more nuanced view of power, seeing it not exclusively as class-related but extending throughout society. This view derives primarily from Michel Foucault. In its tendency to see society as consisting of texts relating to other texts, with no 'fixed' literary value above and beyond the way specific societies read them in specific situations, New Historicism also owes something to post-modernism. However, New Historicists tend to exhibit less skepticism than post-modernists, and show more willingness to perform the 'traditional' tasks of literary criticism: i.e. explaining the text in its context, and trying to show what it 'meant' to its first readers. In the example of The Tempest above, New Historicist writers sometimes touch on themes also dealt with by critics in the school of Edward Said.

New Historicist critics also place much emphasis on power and power struggles. The rationale is that the lowest common denominator for all human actions is power, so the New Historicist seeks to find examples of power and its disbursment in text. Power is a means through which the marginalized are controlled, and the thing that the marginalized (or, other) seek to gain. This relates back to the idea that because literature is written by those who have the most power, there must be details in it that show the views of the common people. New Historicists seek to find "sites of struggle" to identify just who is the group or entity with the most power.

Relating to power in New Historicism is also contains the idea resurrected by Foucault of the panopticon, a theoretical prison system developed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham stated that the perfect prison/surveillance system would be a cylindrical shaped room that held prison cells on the outside walls. In the middle of this spherical room would be a large guard tower with a light that would shine in all the cells. The prisoners thus would never know for certain whether or not they were being watched, so they would effectively police themselves, and be as actors on a stage, giving the appearance of submission, although they are probably not being watched.

Foucault included this in his ideas about power to illustrate the idea of lateral surveillance, or self-policing, that occours in the text when those who are not in power are made to believe that they are being watched by those who are. His purpose was to show that power would often change the behavior of the subordinate class, and they would often fall into line whether there was a true need to do so or not.

External Links

• New Historicism from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism