Every theory has its pet names. What does New Historicism think of literature, authors, and readers?
What is literature?
Everything is literature! A Youtube video, twerking, King Lear, the Super Bowl are all “texts” that we can analyze as New Historicists. As long as we do this new thing of putting them in their historical context.
What is an author?
An author is a product of a certain time and place. Authors just can’t escape their social and historical environment, and their work reflects this. They’re trapped!
What is a reader?
A reader is someone who analyzes “texts” of all kinds—plays, rituals, social conventions—in order to understand how that text is shaped by its socio-historical environment—and how it comments on or critiques that environment.
But we readers, like authors, are also the product of a specific time and place. So yes: we’re trapped too.