New Historicism

New Historicism is a theoretical approach to literature that suggests that literature

must be read, studied and interpreted within the historical context of its production,
including the personal history of the author. It differs from New Criticism in that, unlike
the latter, it does not accept the autonomy of the text, that a literary text can be studied in
isolation, independent of the historical conditions in which it was produced, including the
life of the author. While previous historical criticism limited itself to showing how a text
reflected (or refracted) the times in which it was produced, New Historicism, abandoning
the object-mirror frame, attempts to reveal how a text is related in complex ways to the
times of its production. New Historicism, again, unlike previous historical criticism,
does not view the text and its context as separate entities. Rather, it discusses the text
also as part of its historical context. New Historicist readings normally use vast amounts
of background information collected from social, cultural, political and literary history in
analyzing the text. It will look for cues/clues in the text which tell the reader about
cultural phenomena, social conditions and historical processes which inform the text.
New Historicism will, for example, look at the ways in which the practice of slavery in
America in the Nineteenth Century influenced Whitman’s poetry, explain how Robert
Lowell’s poem For the Union Dead (1964) relates itself to both the anti-Vietnam-War
protests and the reaction of the Beat generation to the crass commercialization of
American culture in the Sixties, how liberal democratic opposition to the Communist
Party in Kerala in the Fifties is voiced in Basheer’s Viswavikhyaadamaaya Mookku (The
World-renowned Nose, 1954) and how some of the narrator’s statements and turns in
the plot in Karoor’s story Poovanpazham (1949) can be explicated with reference to the
Caste System as it was practiced in Kerala in the middle of the Twentieth Century. In
short, unlike New Criticism which looks only into the text, New Historicism constantly
looks outside the text for its reading.

New Historicist readings will also be on the look out for the author’s biographical
details which illuminate the whole or parts of the text. They often dwell on the author’s
childhood and upbringing, her maturity and career and the experiences and books that
influenced her writing. In reading M T Vasudevan Nair’s novel Naalukettu, for instance,
a New Historicist critic is likely to inquire into the author’s childhood and education, his
upbringing in a traditional Nair Tharavad, the deprivations he faced in early life and the
pecuniary circumstances of his education, to speculate on whether the author created the
protagonist Appunni in his own image, and to look for models in real life for imposing
characters in the novel like Valyammaama. Moreover, New Historicism does not look at
writers as sages or prophets. Although writers are often less involved in the issues of
day-to-day life than average citizens, they too participate in social life. New Historicism
recognizes the skills of the writers which make them different from other members of
society, but it credits them with the same basic capabilities and weaknesses as human
beings. The author or artist does not conjure the work entirely from their own
imagination like a wizard from out of his hat, but draws from the ideas, vocabularies and
beliefs of her or his culture to produce a work which that culture can understand. Even
when a writer is seen as being ahead of his times, or thinking differently from most of his
contemporaries, New Historicist readings, instead of describing him/her as an isolated
visionary, try to relate this difference to emerging or entrenched subversive or antithetical
movements and trends in contemporary literature or culture. Thus Pulimaana
Parameswaran Pillai’s expressionist play in Malayalam Samathvavadi (The Socialist,
1944)) though certainly much ahead of its times, can be perceived as an experiment in
drama inspired by Western models with which it had become fashionable to cultivate an
acquaintance during the author’s career, especially after the publication of the
introductory articles on European fiction and drama by Kesari Balakrishna Pillai.

It was Stephen Greenblatt who first used the term New Historicism in 1982 to
describe the work he and some others had done on the European Renaissance. But New
Historicist critical practice can be said to have been really launched in 1980 when
Greenblatt published his book Renaissance and Self Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare. New Historicism was primarily an American critical movement, while
Cultural Materialism another movement with which New Historicism shared many
attributes was largely practiced in Britain. The preoccupation of New Historicism with
the historicity of literary texts has much in common with traditional Marxist criticism.
But New Historicism evolved as a theoretical paradigm under the strong influence of
poststructuralist theories of language and textuality, especially the work of Michel
Foucoult. Among the many ideas that New Historicism drew from Foucoult, the
following, all of which represent a deviation from traditional Marxist positions, may be
considered crucial: 1) The notion that history is discontinuous, that history is basically a
series of phenomena that are juxtaposed, that overlap or intersect with one another, but
never move in linear progression or form a unified whole. Traditional Marxist criticism
looked at history in terms of linear progression and societies which were organized on the
basis of holistic ideologies. 2) The idea that any period of history has to be viewed, not
as a unified whole with a monolithic social structure or all-pervasive ideology (as
traditional Marxism did), but as a site for contending world views and organizing
principles. Thus one has to talk about “Victorian World Views” (in the plural) rather
than “Victorian World View.” 3) The view that power is not something appropriated by a
class or group and is imposed on the masses (the traditional Marxist view) but something
that governs all human relations, interactions and communications. Power is not
considered as a necessarily oppressive force, but as something that produces discourse,
something that makes the wheels of society turn, even producing pleasure in the process.
New Historicism also adopted Fourcoult’s notions of identity as constructed, rather than
given, and of the textuality of history. Louise Montrose, who like Stephen Greenblatt, is
considered one of the founding fathers of New Historicism, talks about the textuality of
history along with the historicity of texts. History is not a ‘true record of past events’, but
writings about past events from various points of view or ideological positions. This is in
tune with much of post-structuralist theory which does not accept absolute or universal
truths, but regard the truth value of any idea as being constructed in specific contexts
under specific set of perceptions.

The cutting edge of New Historicist analysis and interpretation became visible in
studies on the culture and literature of the European Renaissance, especially on iconic
literary figures like Shakespeare. In Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980), Greenblatt
invokes Foucault’s conceptualization of power to fashion a critical paradigm, a ‘poetics
of culture’ that enables the reading of the complex network of languages, literatures and
other sign systems that he locates in Renaissance literature. The most revealing insights
about the works and times of Shakespeare till date have, perhaps, been the contribution of
New Historicism. In New Historicist readings, Shakespeare appears, not as the
quintessential icon of English/British culture, nor as a literary genius par excellence, but
as a writer whose writing is inseparable from its historical context. Surprisingly, New
Historicism, in bringing Shakespeare down to earth, seems to have elevated him in
literary status – as a writer whose works brilliantly negotiate the complexities and
constraints of his age.

New Historicism makes no distinction between literary and non-literary texts, an

attitude that is diametrically opposite to that of New Criticism, which privileged literary
texts. All texts, regardless of the discourse which produced them – religion, law,
commerce, science, or whatever – are considered to be equally revealing and equally
relatable to the socio-cultural matrix from which they emerged. New Historicism also
makes no distinction between popular culture and high culture. Greenblatt’s extensive
use of non-literary texts produced during the Renaissance is illustrative. As New
Historicism accepted the notion that all identities, believes and values are constructed,
rather than given, it is also willing to concede that its own assumptions could be
considered as constructed, and be deconstructed in their turn. But such an open-minded
approach did not prevent the practitioners of New Historicism from taking up strong
political positions, especially in combating the neo-conservative policies of Margaret
Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America.

Some of the most serious criticism of New Historicism has come from Cultural
Materialism with which it shares a large territory of assumptions and beliefs. One
problem that has been identified with New Historicism is that it works with a model,
which, because of its ‘neutrality’ and non-privileging attitude cannot generate the energy
for political action, something which clearly distinguishes it from traditional Marxist
criticism. For Cultural Materialism, the avowed task is to expose the ways in which
hegemonic forces try to stave off the challenge from residual and emergent forces that
threaten to undermine their hegemony. Such an exposure will necessarily outlines ways
and possibilities for subversion. There is also a case for criticizing New Historicism for
its excessive dependence on Foucouldian notions of power. In Foucault, power is not
always a repressive force. In fact it is almost a benignant force when he talks about it
creating discourse and producing pleasure. To classical Marxism, power was a necessary
evil, to be used by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, on seizing power, to continue
the class war. Its utopian vision of the state withering away also incorporates the notion
of the withering away of power – of all power relations. The pessimistic strain in some
of Greenblatt’s works is also suggestive. In his essay “Invisible Bullets” (1981)
Greenblatt argues that subversion plays into the hands of power, that power needs
subversion and that power, in fact, produces subversion to further its end. Frederic
Jameson’s criticism that New Historicism’s textualist approach to history leads to a kind
of nominalism ( the notion that the ideas represented in language has no basis in reality)
should also be taken seriously.

Visappu
Let us approach Vaikom Muhammed Basheer’s story Visappu (Hunger), written
sometime between 1937 and 1941 according to the author, using New Historicist
strategies. The protagonist of the story is Kochukrishnan who is a peon ( or ‘peons’ as he
liked to put it a little pompously), or office attendant in a college. Like many young
bachelors he is frustrated by his failure to strike up relationships with women. All he can
do is to watch young women and girls, some of them students, walking along the road
with longing eyes. He is particularly fond of watching the wife of the principal of the
college where he works. She makes quite a spectacle to him as she stands on the balcony
of her home, scantily dressed by the generally accepted standards of her day, in what
appears to Kochukrishnan as an alluring pose. The description of her appearance, made
from Kochukrishnan’s point of view, is a word picture that closely resembles the
photographs of actors and models commonly seen on the covers of popular magazines
and in film posters today. But at the beginning of the Forties of the Twentieth Century no
film poster or magazine cover displayed such photographs. Probably Visappu is the first
story that carries such a description in Malayalam fiction. The sight of the Principal’s
wife leaves Kochukrishnan’s throat parched and his eyes blurred.

Ousepp and Damodaran, Kochukrishnan’s roommates at the lodge where he lived

were unimpressed by his plight. They probably held jobs as poorly paid as
Kochukrishnan’s. But unlike Kochukrishnan, they were married and the exigensies of
life had made them rigidly practical. They could not imagine the kind of frustration that
made Kochukrishnan lose his appetite. In fact, Ousepp advised Kochukrishnan to purge
his bowels the following weekend so that he could regain his appetite.

It is at this point that the significance of the title of the story becomes apparent.
Hunger was thematically central to the Left-leaning literary movement called
Jeevalsahitha Prasthanam (literally ‘living literature movement’) founded in 1937 and
renamed later as Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanam (Progressive Literary Movement). It
was the first literary movement in Malayalam committed to the practice and study of
literature that addressed the underprivileged sections of society. Although many of the
writers in the movement were friends and acquaintances of Basheer, he himself was not
associated with the movement. But hunger was a recurring theme in many of Basheer’s
works written during this period, including Janmadinam, Maranathinte Nizhalil and
Kathabeejam. Many of these stories could be traced to Basheer;s personal experiences,
as both his memoirs and the accounts of his close associates and friends indicate.
However, for Basheer, food was not the only thing that men and women hungered for.
They hungered for love, sex, peace and spirituality too. Ousepp and Damodaran, like
many writers in the Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanam, could not conceive of these
human urges as hunger. Which is why they were insensitive to Kochukrishnan’s
predicament.
 Kochukrishnan’s hunger for the presence of women is an ‘integrated’ hunger.
Although the story begins with a description which can be traditionally describes as
pornographic, the author makes it clear a little later in the story during Kochukrishnan’s
meeting with Elizabeth, a sex worker, that Kochukrishnan hungers after woman as a
totality – for both her body and her mind. This signals a break with the unnatural,
mechanical separation of body and mind in the representation of relations between the
opposite sexes in much of Malayalam literature in the first half of the Twentieth Century,
the representation at the core of most of Kumaran Asan’s poems and taken over by
Changampuzha, especially in his popular poems like Udyaanadevatha and Ramanan.

As it happened, Kochukrishanan’s hunger remained unsatiated. Elizabeth, after

giving him false hopes, failed to turn up at the appointed hour. Hoping against hope,
Kochukrishnan waited for her for three years. When he saw her next, she looked like a
hag, aged unnaturally by disease and poverty. She now begged for a living. Although
Kochukrishnan recognized her, she was unable to recognize him. Kochukrishnan bought
her lunch and handed her a packet which he had kept for her for the last three years. It
contained a sari, a length of white silk cloth for a bodice, a bottle of perfume and a toilet
soap. Obviously, it was not just sexual desire that had attracted Kochukrishnan to
Elizabeth. The story ends with a repeat of the opening paragraph – the description of the
Principal’s wife standing on the balcony of her home.

It is interesting to look at the ways in which the story historicizes itself.

Kochukrishnan drew a monthly salary of Eight Rupees, which was probably not much
more than what a farmhand or an industrial worker earned in those days (a regularly
appointed office attendant in a government institution earns about a thousand times as
much today). We learn from Ousepp and Damodaran that the bodice, a precursor of the
contemporary bra, was then a new-fangled thing that was catching the fancy of women.
There are revealing descriptions of Kochukrishnan’s regular monthly budget and of a
revised one which was to become applicable if he were to start living with Elizabeth.
The monthly rent for a room in a cheap lodge was two rupees. A plain lunch at a
restaurant cost nine paise, a cup of tea three paise and a toilet soap eighteen paise. The
Japanese sari that Kochukrishnan bought Elizabeth cost him two rupees. Visappu is both
story and history.

Further reading

• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translation of Surveiller et Punir.

Vintage, 1979.
• Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. U Chicago P, 1980.
• Orgel, Stephen. The Authentic Shakespeare. Routledge, 2002.
• Veeser, H. Aram (Ed.). The New Historicism. Routledge, 1989.
• Dixon, C 2005, Important people in New Historicism, viewed 26 April 2006.
• Felluga, D 2003, General introduction to New Historicism, viewed 28 April 2006,
• Hedges, W 2000, New Historicism explained, viewed 20 March 2006
• Murfin, R. & Ray, S 1998, The Bedford glossary of critical and literary terms,
Bedford Books, St Martins.
• Myers, D G 1989, The New Historicism in literary study, viewed 27 April 2006,
• Rice, P & Waugh, P 1989, Modern literary theory: a reader, 2nd edn, Edward
Arnold, Melbourne.
• Seaton, J 1999, "The metaphysics of postmodernism", review of Carl Rapp,
Fleeing the Universal: The Critique of Post-rational Criticism (1998), in
Humanitas 12.1 (1999), viewed 29 April 2006.
• The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary 2004, 4th edn, Oxford University
Press,South Melbourne.