The school of literary criticism known as New Historicism rightly perceives the importance of historical context in illuminating texts, but can downplay the individual artistry of the author, Visiting Assistant Professor of English Benedict Whalen said Friday at a lecture in the Formal Lounge of the Grewcock Student Union.
Whalen’s talk was organized by the literature honorary Lambda Iota Tau and was one of a series of lectures on literary theories. Previous lectures this year have included a talk on Mimetic Theory by Associate Professor of English Justin Jackson and a talk on New Criticism by Assistant Professor of English Dutton Kearney.
Whalen said that New Historicism’s approach to a text begins with examining historical context rather than seeking to understand the text as an autonomous entity. The movement was largely inspired by philosophical historian Michel Foucault’s work in the 1960s and became particularly dominant between the late 1970s and 1990s.
“Foucault suggested that history is primarily formed by movements of power, and that primarily power consists of unconscious structures for organizing or categorizing knowledge,” Whalen said. This phenomenon was termed “power-knowledge” by Foucault.
“He said in each era there are these different structures for ordering knowledge that give rise to power,” Whalen said. According to Whalen, New Historicists perceive power not primarily as something possessed but rather as something exercised through using, speaking, or writing about knowledge. This, he said, explains how Foucault’s philosophy relates to literature.
“If power is in these structures, power in its most essential form would take place in forms of writing and conversation,” he said.
New Historicists, then, use literature to try to perceive an era’s exercise of the structures of power from which “it can’t escape.”
Rather than beginning by examining the text, new historicists begin with some piece of information from a historical archive, perhaps completely unrelated to the piece of literature, and try to plug it into “a larger, complex system of power.” Unlike other historians, however, new historicists don’t just ask what happened, but how it has been interpreted and how that interpretation relates to the interpreters. According to new historicists, authors are always either exercising or subverting those organizational structures of knowledge.
Whalen ended his lecture by noting that New Historicism has both pros and cons.
The positives include producing “a more rigorous attention to historical detail [among literary scholars], and that is potentially beneficial,” he said. “History and literature shouldn’t be these separated disciplines, but they should be in conversation with each other.”
He nevertheless noted that he personally is not a New Historicist, and believes its adherents, broadly, don’t give enough credence to the idea of artistic genius.
“Historical context is important, but it is shaped through the writer, and does not simply determine what the writer writes,” he concluded.
According to LIT Vice President for Social Affairs senior Kirsten Hall, the honorary first began organizing these lectures in order to expand their presence on campus and meet a need among English students for instruction in literary theory.
“I always feel that justice has been done to a topic when you can seriously entertain an idea while still understanding what its limits are,” she said in an email. “After Dr. Whalen’s lecture, I can say that I have a new appreciation for good New Historicist criticism and can see where it’s important and relevant even if I don’t completely buy into it.”
Assistant Professor of English Lorraine Eadie, who attended, said she was especially grateful for Whalen’s comments on New Historicism’s strengths and weaknesses.
“I valued his presentation as a chance to step back from the close reading of primary texts and reflect for a moment on theory,” she said. “Whether we’re aware of it or not, theoretical presuppositions always inform what we do when we take up a literary work.”
LIT’s next lecture in the series will be on Structuralism, and will be given by Kearney at 3 p.m. tomorrow in the Formal Lounge.
