Basics of New historicism and Cultural materialism with illustrations

1. New Historicism &
Cultural Materialism
Dr K.S.Antonysamy
Loyola College, Chennai

2. Signpost
Suggestion
Nature of critical
theories
● Reader as a
catalyst
Part I
'New historicism
● Definition
● Characteristics
● NH vs Others
● NH & OH
● Theoretical Affiliation
● Illustration - MSND
'
Part II
Cultural materialism
● Context
● Theoretical Affiliation
● Definition
● CM Vs NH
● Illustration - Othello

3. Critical theories
Reading of critical theories propounded
during 20th century and 21st century would
give us a feel of excavating. The more you
read, the deeper the understanding of these
critical theories becomes. The more you
apply these theories to the text, the greater is
the meaning of the text generated. What you
read and understand today may be rewritten
by you tomorrow. Every day it seems to be a
newer experience.

4. Terms related to Historicism
Historical Approach - historical and
cultural events that might influence the
author
Historiography - the writing of history
based on the critical examination of
sources
Historicism -Challenging progressive
view of History

5. Professing the
Renaissance: The
Poetics and Politics
of Culture (1989)
New Historicism
Michel Foucault Stephen Greenblatt
Renaissance Self-
Fashioning: from
More to
Shakespeare (1980)
Louis Montrose Louis Althusser
Ideology and
Ideological State
Apparatuses (1970)
Discipline and
Punish: The Birth
of the Prison
(1975)

6. How do critics define NH?
Greenblatt
'an intensified
willingness to read all
of the textual traces
of the past with the
attention traditionally
conferred only on
literary texts'
Montrose
'the textuality of
history, the historicity
of texts'
Peter Barry
‘the parallel reading
of literary and non-
literary texts, usually
of the same historical
period’

7. Characteristics
● Challenges
conservative critical
views about
literature
● Reading literature
'within the archival
continuum'
● Resolutely anti-
establishment
● Self-fashioning
Where [earlier] criticism had mystified Shakespeare as an
incarnation of spoken English, it [new historicism] found
the plays embedded in other written texts, such as penal,
medical and colonial documents. Read within this archival
continuum, what they represented was not harmony but
the violence of the Puritan attack on carnival, the
imposition of slavery, the rise of patriarchy, the hounding
of deviance, and the crashing of prison gates during what
Foucault called 'the Age of Confinement, at the dawn of
carceral society' ['carceral' comes from the Latin word
carcer, meaning a prison] (Wilson & Dutton, p. 8).

8. New Historicism & Old Historicism
● 'Equal weighting' to literary
and non-literary materials
● History as represented and
recorded in written
documents
● Interpretations about the
interpreters
● Hierarchical separation
between the literary text and
the historical 'background'
● Historical framework in which
the text is placed
● History seen in a linear,
causal relationship

9. Theoretical Affiliations
Panoptic State - Foucault
Hegemonic rule - Gramsci
Interpellation - Althusser

10. Montrose’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream and shaping
Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form
The festive conclusion of A Midsummer Night's Dream,
its celebration of romantic and generative
heterosexual union, depends upon the success of a
process whereby the female pride and power
manifested in misanthropic warriors, possessive
mothers, unruly wives, and willful daughters are
brought under the control of husbands and lords.

11. Cultural materialism
On a basic level, cultural materialism has
been equated with new historicism because
both practices interpret literary texts as
historical and cultural artefacts.
Cultural materialism
‘studies the implication of literary
texts in history’
(Dollimore and Sinfield (1985)

12. Context
‘Sociology of Literature’
conferences held at Essex
University from 1976 to 1984
&
A Journal, Literature and
History, founded in 1975, and
edited at Thames Polytechnic
from 1975 to 1988.
The break-up of consensus in British political life
during the 1970s was accompanied by the break-up
of traditional assumptions about the values and
goals of literary criticism. Initially at specialised
conferences and in committed journals, but
increasingly in the main stream of intellectual life,
literary texts were related to the new and
challenging discourses of Marxism, feminism,
structuralism, psychoanalysis and poststructuralism.
It is widely admitted that all this has brought a new
rigour and excitement to literary discussions. At the
same time, it has raised profound questions about
the status of literary texts, both as linguistic entities
and as ideological forces in our society.
(Dollimore and Sinfield 1985)

13. Theoretical Affiliation
A materialist approach to the study of culture
● A materialist conception of class identity to bear on the study of
history
E.P.Thompson (1924-1993)
● Culture as much the object of literary study as literature
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014)
● 'We cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social
practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special
and distinct laws' Raymond Williams (1921-1988)

14. Structures of Feeling
Structures of feeling are concerned
with 'meanings and values as they are
lived and felt'. They are often
antagonistic both to explicit systems of
values and beliefs, and to the dominant
ideologies within a society.
Raymond Williams, "Structures of Feeling", In
Marxism and Literature, Oxford University
Press, 1977, pp. 128-135

15. Influence of Marxist
and feminist
perspectives and the
break from the
conservative-Christian
framework
A politicized form of historiography -Graham Holderness
Historical
context
Undermines the
transcendent
significance
traditionally
accorded to the
literary text
Theoretical
method
Break with liberal
humanism and the
absorbing of the
lessons of
structuralism, post-
structuralism
Political commitment Textual
analysis
Practising it on
canonical texts which
continue to be the
focus of massive
amounts of academic
and professional
attention

16. Characteristics
● Culture is referred to all forms of culture ('forms like television and
popular music and fiction')
● 'Materialism' signifies the opposite of 'idealism'
● An emphasis on the functioning of the institutions through which
Shakespeare is brought to us
● Using the past to 'read' the present and revealing the politics of our
own society by what we choose to emphasise or suppress of the
past

17. New historicism Vs Cultural materialism
Concentrates on those at the top of the
social hierarchy
Focuses on the oppressive aspects of
society that people have to overcome to
achieve change
Uses only co-texts that would have been
contemporary to the text in question
Influenced by Foucault , whose 'discursive
practices' are frequently a reinforcement
of dominant ideology
Concentrates on those at the bottom of
the social hierarchy
Focuses on how that change is wrought
Uses co-texts from the entire trajectory of
a text’s history
Raymond Williams, whose 'structures of
feeling' contain the seeds from which
grows resistance to the dominant
ideology

18. “Cultural Materialism,
Othello, and the Politics of
Plausibility” by Alan Sinfield
(1992)
It is stated that Iago's story (discourse) works, not
because he is cunning, but because his lies
perfectly mirror the presumptions, assumptions,
and prejudices of a Venetian culture that sees
blacks as exotic, inferior to whites, ignorant,
barbaric, and prone to revert to type.
Sinfield refers to the underlying cultural material
that Iago exploits (and of which Othello is victim)
as "the politics of plausibility."

19. The Production of ideology
Understandings of a system of social relationships
Potent ideology is that which produces the greatest degree of
plausibility. Although ideology is produced at all points of the cultural
spectrum, nowhere is it more powerful than in the stories (discourses)
of the powerful elite. The discourses of the elite sound more plausible
than explanations (stories) of those who have been marginalized (as
Othello has).

20. Desdemona's Defiance
BRABANTIO
Do you perceive in all this noble company
Where most you owe obedience?
DESDEMONA
My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty:
To you I am bound for life and education;
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you; you are the lord of duty;
I am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother show'd
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.

21. Reading Dissidence
Forces disagreeing with
Sinfiled cites queer theater as a dissident strategy.
One component of dissident strategies is to denaturalize as evidenced in the
discussion on “The Gay Caballero,” “Alternative Family Values,” and “Gender
Defenders,” the Mickee Faust Club, as queer theater.
Sinfield questions what the best dissident strategies might be?
He writes: “[No] strategy emerges as the magical answer. The task is not to specify
the one, true strategy, but to be flexible and cunning – as dominant ideologies are”

22. A play by Shakespeare is related to the contexts of its production - to the
economic and political system of Elizabethan and Jacobean England and
to the particular institutions of cultural production (the court, patronage,
theatre, education, the church). Moreover, the relevant history is not just
that of four hundred years ago, for culture is made continuously and
Shakespeare's text is reconstructed, reappraised, reassigned all the time
through diverse institutions in specific contexts.
- Dollimore and Sinfield (1994)

23. References
● Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, Manchester
University Press, 1995
● Culler, Jonathan, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn), Oxford University Press,
2011, Print
● Dollimore, Jonathan and Sinfield, Alan, eds, Introduction, Political Shakespeare: New Essays in
Cultural Materialism, Manchester: Manchester University press 2nd edn, 1994
● Foucault, Michel, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage
Books, 1975
● Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, University of Chicago
Press, 1980
● Habib, M.A.R., Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History, Blackwell Publishing, 2008
● Williams, Raymond, "Structures of Feeling", In Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press,
1977