Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :“New Historicisms” in Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies
The poststructuralist orientation to history now emerging in literary studies I characterize chiastically, as a reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.
Whoa. Textuality? Reciprocal? Chiastically? According to Microsoft two of those aren’t even words.
But don’t worry. We New Historicists are very influenced by post-structuralism (it came after structuralism). And what this idea leads us to do is to turn things on their head: we look at literary texts in terms of history, and we look at history in terms of literary texts.
In other words, we like to emphasize how a literary text is bound up in its historical context. We also like to emphasize how history itself is like a text. History isn’t some unchanging thing, or a list of objective facts. There is no one “true” version of history, just as there is no one true “interpretation” of a Shakespearean tragedy. When we “write” history, we’re not just re-stating the facts. We’re composing history in the same way that an author composes a literary text.
Montrose’s definition of New Historicism here is famous, even if it uses kind of silly words. That’s because it captures really well the relationship between literature and history, as the New Historicists understand it. If anyone asks us to explain New Historicism, we can just quote Montrose: it’s all about “the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.” That is definitely a line to impress the girls and guys with.