New Historicism

1. New Historicism Texts, Discourses, and Theses

2. What Is a Text? • Literary studies has traditionally treated only those texts within a specific canon as deserving of serious critical attention. • New Historical critics explode the boundaries of what is considered a text. • What makes a text a text? • Social value • How does this affect the idea of literature?

3. New Historicism: Not Exactly Historical/Biographical Historical/Biographical, while useful, generally only investigates the degree to which the “context” of an author’s life and the book’s publication influenced the text. The idea here is that history is a stable reference point, against which, we can compare the text. Hist/Bio doesn’t necessarily require a political subtext.

4. New Historicism: Cultural Critic • New Historicism, as it is rooted in cultural studies, offers enormous flexibility. • Many theorists, many contexts (e.g., Foucault, Jameson, Greenblatt, Bakhtin, etc.) • Text is situated. • Discourse analysis is essential.

5. New Historicism: Finding the Discourses • Locate the pathways of power in the text. • Foucault’s epistime/Regime of Truth. • The namer versus the named. • Look for discourses of normativity. • Then, look for the discourses that get dominated/silenced/recast. • Texts fit somewhere among society’s discourses. That is what it means to be situated. • Locate the discourses exerting power on the text, within the text, through the text. That is the beginning of a thesis.

6. Writing the New Historicist Thesis • Ask the question: Where does the text fit? • What resources do I need in order to “listen” adequately to the text? • Is the text supporting dominant power structures? Is it subverting them? • What discourses do I find represented in the text? What social rules (epistemes) to they enforce or undermine? • Is the author representing the dominant discourse or is she a subaltern? • What voices have been silenced in the text? What silenced voices have been given room to speak?

7. Writing the New Historicist Paper: Thesis • Your thesis ought to supply at least three elements: • Which discourses are vital to your interpretation; • The direction of power in your interpretation; • The place that the text holds in that web of power. • Remember: New Historical papers are extremely diverse. That’s the fun! • Your job is to piece together the discourses that exist in and around the text and use them to say something unique about the text and perhaps even advocate something socially or politically significant.

8. Writing the New Historicist Paper: Outline • Most of the same rules that apply to good organization in any paper also apply here. • Follow the thesis. • Build the argument gradually. • Conclude with something really significant. • With New Historicist Papers, think of your argument as a series of lenses that bring the point of your thesis into focus. • Thus, decide which lenses need to be explained at what point.

9. Writing the New Historicist Paper: Outline I. Thesis II. New Historicism/Theorist III. Necessary Context IV. Textual Interpretation V. Connection to Real World Advocacy/Movement

10. Two Texts • “Candles in Babylon” by Denise Levertov • The Watts Towers • Let’s start asking the questions!

11. Facts About the Texts “Candles in Babylon” The Watt’s Towers • Written in 1982: Reaganomics? • Known as a political poet, especially post Vietnam. • Exceptionally religious past. Priestly father, connections to a Welsh Mysticism. • Parents were political activists. • Connected to the Black Mountain Poets. • Believed in poetry as a way to express moral truths. • Compare to pre-Vietnam Levertov poetry • 17 interconnected structures in South L.A. • Built by Italian-Immigrant construction worker, Simon Rodia, over 33 years, from 1921-1954. • Vernacular architecture. • Constructed of “found” objects. • Ceased construction because of vandalism and disagreements with neighbors.