Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :“Introduction,” The New Historicism
Key assumptions continually reappear and bind together the avowed practitioners and even some of their critics: these assumptions are as follows:
- that every expressive act is embedded in a network of materialist practices;
- that every act of unmasking, critique, and opposition uses the tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes;
- that literary and non-literary “texts” circulate inseparably;
- that no discourse, imaginative or archival, gives access to unchanging truths nor expresses inalterable human nature;
- finally….that a critical method and a language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe.
Gurl, that’s a lot of numbers. But don’t worry, it’s cool, because even though our buds the New Historicist critics come in tons of shapes and sizes and are interested in loads of different periods and issues, we can still identify some common assumptions that underlie their work. Five assumptions, to be precise, and they are these:
- When we (or great authors like Shakespeare or Chuck Dickens) express ourselves, we don’t just do it in a vacuum. We express ourselves out of very concrete economic, material and historical circumstances. Sure, geniuses like Bill and Chuck express themselves much more eloquently than we do, but like us, their expression (especially artistic expression) was influenced by concrete circumstances such as economics, class structures, political structures, and beyond.
- Wanna critique Billy and Chuckie? Careful: it’s tough to critique something without putting ourselves in the funny position of becoming that thing we’re critiquing. Our big brother likes to pull our nose. Annoying, yeah? So, to protest his tyranny, we slap him in the face. Great, so we’re also using the same oppressive tools he’s using (violence). In the literary world, this means that if you talk about the classist assumptions Charlie makes in his depiction of imperial England, maybe you’re saying some stuff that comes from a sort of elitist academic background of today, too.
- There is no boundary that separates “high” literature from “low” literature. We may consider Shakespeare to be “high” literature, but guess what, folksies? Shakespeare was reading a lot of trash. If some of his work was inspired by reading trashy stuff, how do we draw the line between highbrow art and real trashy stuff? It’s all mixed up together. So let’s not try to separate the high from the low.
- There is no such thing as “universal truth” or a deep, unchanging “human nature.” It all depends. So let’s get rid of the idea that “great” works of art give us some kind of special access to these deep truths, because these truths don’t exist—whatever deep thing you’re seeking is going to be different whether you’re reading Dostoevsky, or Dickinson, or Dante. Take that, all you truth-seekers out there.
- Capitalism? Screw that. It forces people to work long hours for low pay, it concentrates wealth into the hands of the very few at the top, and it turns us all into these Robo-consumers who buy, buy, buy. Gross, Not to mention that it means making art becomes about making money, and that isn’t good for art.
So, from a theory perspective? Well, we New Historicists may sit there and criticize capitalism and its effects on culture, but the fact is even our critique of capitalism participates in, and upholds, the capitalist economy. We are, after all, a bunch of academics working at universities that are filthy rich thanks to capitalism (those huge tuition fees that students have to pay for an education? All used to pay fat salaries for badass New Historicist research. One hundred percent true.).
We know you’d just been craving this theory in bullet points all this time, and thanks to Harold Veeser, you got it, friend.
But what’s cool about Harry’s summary is that it points to the fact that, even though New Historicist critics work in very different periods and deal with very different issues and materials, there are still some core beliefs and assumptions that define their work. Whew!