 Hello and welcome back to NPTEL national program of Technology Enhanced Learning as our adventure of Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Science. As you are aware this lectures are for students of all the IITs and other engineering colleges and the role of humanities and social sciences is quite significant in the curriculum of engineering students. I am Krishna Barua, I teach English in the department of humanities and social sciences at IIT Guwahati. As you are aware we are presently in the lecture series language and literature and we are in module 5 of this series titled literary criticism. Today we are going to do lecture 5 of this module titled New Historicism. Well, as we have done many aspects of literary criticism it would be relevant to let us see what is literary criticism. As I have told you this is only the basis of how you interpret, how you find meaning in a text, which perspective that you take. So, it is necessary to have a perspective to read or interpret a work of literature. So, let us enjoy the history of literary criticism. I hope you have done it till now. A journey we are about to undertake in this module and it is not only to revisit some of the profound sources of history of literary criticism, but to locate this history within the context of the main currents of western thought. And literary theory when we really come to the understanding of what is literary theory or literary criticism. It is in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature, what is literature, what is a text, what are the contents and of the methods for analyzing literature. As I have told you earlier I think it is very close to your discipline where you can analyze, you can dissect the text according to what perspective you take. One of the fundamental questions of literary theory is what is literature, what is a text, what methods and conclusions and definitions are chalked out. As a consequence the word theory has become an umbrella term for all different ways that we look at the text. Therefore it is also entails the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature. So, this is a practical application of how you read a creative work. It is a description of the underlying principles one might say the tools by which we attempt to understand literature. After you finish this module maybe you will be able to understand that there are systematic methods of reading a text. It is literary theory that formulates the relationships between author and work and literary theory develops the significance of race, class, gender for literary study. Well therefore, literary theory and literary criticism are interpretive tools. These are tools of interpretation, how you find meaning or evaluate a text that help us think more deeply and insightfully about the literature that we read. Over time different schools of literary criticism have developed each with its own approaches to the act of theory. And when we look at the inventory of basic critical questions which literary theory deals with, sometimes it becomes ontological, what is the works nature, sometimes it becomes epistemological, how can we know the work about the knowledge base, theological, what is the function and purpose of the work, archaeological, descriptive from the point of narratology, interpretive, what can be said about the extrinsic relations of the work to the real world. It may become performative, normative and historical too, what we are going to do today. Or it can be cultural, psychological, genetic and effect. So, a recap of the previous lectures. In lecture one we had done classical criticism. Over there we have seen how Plato and Aristotle paved the way for the basis of literary criticism or literary theory, the question of the orientation in mimetic theory and how forms our ideas cannot exist without its phenomenological manifestation. And how Aristotle building up on Plato's theory of mimesis had talked about genres of writing, about tragedy, about structure and how he took it into technical terms. Lecture two we have liberal humanism, where we had talked about grand narrative which emphasizes upon the progress and liberation of humanity from a socialistic perspective, where we study the text for its timeless significance, it entails close reading and the authenticity and the sincerity and honesty of the text is being emphasized. And lecture three the Marxist where we were looking critiquing texts that assume a classicist society of economy, elitism and hegemony. And lecture five feminism from the study of gender or socially conditioned and linguistically construct quite often teams up with post structuralism in its critique of the dominant main hegemony. And in lecture five we did reader response criticism, which is a theory of literature associated mainly with Stanley Fish and slightly different form Wolfgang Isser and where the emphasis was on the readers about meaning about the way that one takes goes on taking in the subjective view point from time to time. So, today we are in lecture six and title new historicism. By now I hope you have not been confused by the different literary perspectives on reading the text and new historicism will be adding more of it to what you have already done and it is not that it is a very exclusive field of study, but it takes in different ways of how you take in the meaning of history in a text. And by meaning of history I would want to understand that what do you mean by history as Eliot had said even though we are not doing new criticism, but it purges into methods which had been formulated also in new criticism by Eliot when he had talked about the historical sense. A critic must have a historical sense and when we have a historical sense the meaning of historical sense is not that you have to understand the past as it has been recorded to you it is where you have to have context which pervades all through the text all through that time has or event has to be analyzed and has to be understood and this contextualization may bring in many ambiguities may bring in many contrasts, but yet it is a historical sense where you are aware of the currents which are there in all levels whether it is from the geographical, from the metaphysical, from the anthropological, from the daily newspapers or from any other literary source. Well, so new criticism and then Russian formalism insisted upon a close analysis of the text we had done that without taking into account the contextual or historical perspective I was just telling you about the context. Now, critical stance like there is nothing outside the text is propounded by the constructionist critics father made historical analysis, oral liberalism however developed in 80s provide a fresh historical perspective through which a text can be analyzed. So, this is your sense of history we have to understand what is the meaning of history. The term New Historicism was coined by Stephen Greenberg he explored the method in his book Granada Self-Fashioning from Moe to Shakespeare. Well, the term itself is often attributed to Stephen Greenberg who used it in the introduction to this collection of essays in 1982 although he has frequently expressed a preference for the term cultural poetics to describe his own work is very uncomfortable somehow with New Historicism even then we find that it is associated with Stephen Greenberg. It is Greenbergs own text or a NASA self-fashioning in 1980 that is frequently taken to be the first major contribution to the New Historicist enterprise and his work remains inseparable from any attempt to define New Historicism. Well, while we are doing New Historicism let us see what was the old historicism like was a product of 19th century German thought that argued a particular methodological approach the need for historians to fathom the mental universe of past cultures and societies in order to understand them. So, it was some sort of documentation of all the past events and society and a particular value stands a belief that each culture and society was the product of historic circumstance and hence that no comparison or other rather evaluation on a single standard or scale could be made for this believers explanations of behavior were best than historical well, but what is New Historicism according to Mark Robson he said that it is no exaggeration to say that New Historicism has become the dominant mode of literary criticism in the Anglophone world since its emergence in the 1980s and associated in particular with criticism of the early modern and romantic periods. So, it was mostly the NASA study that they took as case study and then 19th some of the central tenants of the New Historicist enterprise have seeped into criticism that would not necessarily identify itself directly with the movement. So, therefore, there is the merging of boundaries sometimes when we see that New Historicism has taken in other methods of literary inevitably the forces of its newness has dissipated in a retrenchment of older forms of historicism and it is also to be seen in disciplines such as art history and history. So, what is it that we have to attend to the New Historicism proposes a universal model of historical change. So, it must be something which we have to see in a perspective which is how we look at the text from the historical perspective based upon such thinkers as Marks, Gromsky, Foucault and Jeremy Bentham the specialist who first took up New Historicism where in RANASA studies they took further study case study RANASA the period of the RANASA. J. E. Howard has said the answer I believe like partly in the uncanny way. So, why choose the RANASA period in which at this historical moment an analysis of RANASA culture can be made to speak to the concerns of the late 20th century culture. Modern nor medieval, but as a boundary or limited space between two when we look at it from the 21st century or from the 20th century we look at the RANASA. So, we find there is two space which is medieval, modern, nor medieval and a liminal space is there between two more monolithic periods where one can see active outer class of paradigms and ideologies and there will be a playfulness with signifying systems as self reflexivity and a self consciousness about the tenuous solidity of human identity which resonate with some of the dominant elements of postmodern culture. So, you find that it becomes many narratives almost which is connected with postmodernism in the way that you see so many narratives being told whether it is not only in the text when you go into the social sphere, when you go into the economic sphere, you go into the newspapers and the diaries and anecdotes which are being told at that time take the example of Shakespeare as Greenblatt had done he went into the states craftsmen's to those who had made costumes, those who had looked up after the theatre all their anecdotes their way that they had function added to the understanding of the text. So, there are two traditions both claiming to be historicism first the one accepted by the new historicism, historicism argues for the contextuality which I had told you just now that you have to understand the work or a piece of literature in the light of the contextuality in the context in which it was written of all human thought and activities it claims no non-historical vantage point for judging such thought activity instead there are changing concepts of value. So, you can go on thinking about different ways of looking at the context according to the way that you are placed peculiar to separate societies this tradition originated in 19th century Germany and is closely related to the anthropological concept of cultural relativism where culture is relative and it goes on changing according to different time and space. The second tradition strongly criticized by Carl Popper the philosopher in his poverty of historicism defines historicism as deterministic and holding as holding that historical forces are irresistible. So, there are two points which claim to be the new historicism not a new historicism two traditions both claiming to be the to be historic. The new historicism comes with peculiar vocabulary it has a peculiar vocabulary of its own right among the concepts which have had wide currency lately in literary studies which have entered into discussions of history too are those of context. So, what are these this vocabulary which is which we had done just now one main point was context then comes tech deconstruction canon what are the canons audience reception theory and discourse. So, you see how the different perspectives or different theories have merged together these are center on questions involving language and how language is being interpreted or represented and constitute what David Hollinger calls linguistic imperialism. So, it is almost as if language is a imperial power and a power politics is played about how language is being created or is represented. Ultimately it is all a question of representation to reduce all history into questions of language and its meaning. And therefore, a pure historical studies would not comply with what this new historicism really brings about as an example the historian should not focus on the deeds of French revolutionaries as they should they do, but upon the symbolic gestures the hidden and covert meetings meanings in the statements and the mutual understandings well. So, literature becomes therefore, a part of historical process. So, it is not separate from the historical process the historical process itself includes creative literature and all creative works. In the first place the contention is that that man have or human nature have no nature no trans historical core of being only history they only have history. They both also hold that different societies vary the old historicism as well as the new historicism who also hold that different societies vary so much in cultural assumptions that the phenomena observed in one cannot be held to be continuous with that of another. So, it is very close to cultural relativism. So, we are even on the verge of cultural studies when we do the new historicism you are taking into account so many things which denotes the culture of a time. The principles of new historicism are strongly opposed to the view that the study of literature should be done independently of social and political context. Instead this historic belief literature is part of the historical process and should participate in the political management of reality. This is called the political management of reality. The new historicism therefore, empowers literature. So, literature becomes empowered as if which helps construct a sense of reality for the reader. It does not simply reflect historical fact, but participates in historical process. So, it is not just imagination. Imagination is the source of this historical process and therefore, what they create an alternate reality or whatever it is it is because of the contextualization of the text in that time and period right. In fact, one of the most notable features of the new historicism was its avowately interdisciplinary intent. So, we are going into different different areas is not it in trying to find out what is this new historicism is or how we are going to look at the text. Literature was soon to be a part of a field that encompassed a diverse range of cultural products. So, it was all economic and cultural products which was the cause for representation and practices and the literary object was thus seen to circulate in a series of context that were in need of reconstruction. So, because of this contextualization it gave place to literature and all these context all these cultural products and its economic products ultimately led to the meaning of representation. This attention to contextual material leads new historicist critics beyond traditional senses of literary history. So, we are going to what is the meaning of history it is being expanded in which text are seen to be related primarily to other texts considered to be literature. While we are studying literary studies we only consider that literature is confined to literary studies, but here we are going into different different realms and it becomes interdisciplinary and a recognition of relations between the literary and the non-literary. This leads not only to a revision of the topics of objects deemed appropriate for literary studies it also prompts a revision of critical methodology right. So, if you study suppose Shakespeare's Hamlet then you study it not only from comparing it with other place which are written by other dramatists during the time or from the sources from where he had taken Shakespeare had taken, but you go and look into the different ways that at that time England was evolving whether it was from the economic sphere, from the social sphere, from the different different stratas which were involved in the making of theaters. So, it is in this broad sense of context and historicism therefore, new historicism has this motives which one has to be very clear about it is the contextualization which is important ideas permeate from the contextualization of the time of the even and of the of the of the period in which one comes. It is in this broad sense of context that historicism addresses itself most obviously to history. The invocation of historical materials and non-literary documents in understanding literature is not in itself particularly new this was done before too. However, where the new historicists seek to make a distinctive intervention. So, the new intervention is where is in the dialectical sense it is in this sense of the dialectics which is being brought about the dialectics of representation where neither does it provide a stock or stable answers for the questions that literature raises. So, when we really go into new historicism we will not find a distinct what would you call methodology. We will try to see the practical implications of the methodology it is more practice oriented than theory oriented. A spatial model of surface depth of our foreground background is rejected by new historicism in favor of an economy in which objects. So, be clear about that where objects ideas and practices they circulate. There is this circulation of social energy you can call it the circulation of social energy as he had said it in Shakespeare's negotiation green blood in his essay. The new historicism therefore, covers a set of aspirations rather than an internal internally consistent methodology. When we went to classical criticism or we went to liberal humanism or to eco criticism deconstruction or any of the other theories we have found that there was a definite consistent methodology, but here we knew historicism we will not find a consistent methodology. To be aware of the historical basis of all these courses is inevitably also to become a convergent with the dialectical way. So, you have to become aware also of how the other theories had taken place, but the real value of this return to history is this implicit measuring of the weaknesses of high theory as well as the naivety of the old historicism in its reliance on the untested assumption. So, now you see everything has been put to test the way that high theory was becoming exclusive and it became something which was not approachable by people ultimately destroying the text in some ways and on the other hand we find the old historicism which only relied on the untested assumption. Well, instead literary texts are related to the cultures. So, to the context to the cultures to the economic situation to the literary situations within which they circulate to the extent that they absorb the structures of value and meaning present throughout that culture. So, by now I think it is quite clear that we see a text in the circulation of energy in the cultural context in the way that it circulates in a form of energy, but this absorption is not necessarily entirely uncritical. Thus, there is a sense of text as interventions rather than mere reflections of the processes by which society secured values. Well, so the history that critics such as Gallagher and Greenblatt evoke is discontinuous. So, it is not linear you have to see that from the present you go to the past from the past you come to the present you modify the past and again the past modifies the present. So, it is a sort of a circular realm and it becomes it is a history which is not history which we had been accustomed to see as linear development of some events or of time. So, it is discontinuous it is fragmentary unstable very much like postmodernism always seem to be in the process of change that is neither progressive nor declining since it is not fundamentally linear. I hope it is clear to you now literature in separable from these processes in fact, literary and other artistic objects become specially interesting why because to new historians because they open up the accepted narratives of history. So, now, we find that history becomes narratives of power history becomes narratives of representation of history to forms of resistance that is when they reveal ideas actions stories that do not fit into established categories to which a period is usually understood. Therefore, they become a part of the entire historical process in the early years of the new historicism. Therefore, let us see at least there is frequently an acknowledgement of the situateness of the critic at least that the critic has some place some way right and thus this form of historicism makes clear its embeddedness in its own cultural moment. If you are seeing a play by Shakespeare from the modern times. So, as a as a as a critic may be from from the 21st century you can look into the renaissance. So, your embeddedness embeddedness of the critic in his own time situateness you can situate the critic in the early years of the new historicism. In light of this approach to be fragmented and discontinuous history literary texts are consequently seen to be similarly discontinuous a conception of the text as permeable always open to a life world in which it is produced consumed traded and read. You you have to see the marketing of the text too you have to see the commercial value of the text you have to see how the printed word came out how it was written what was the market about it how it was consumed who were the audience who were the people who were the taking part of in case of performance suppose of the light or of the stage or of the of the theatre as such. The most obvious sign of the significance of biography would be in the wide uses of green bloods term self fashioning and in his own authorship of a biography of Shakespeare. So, this method as we have seen of new history is different to old historicist method as for old historicist approach we can take for example, the work of Tillard's Elizabethan wall picture. Tillard had shown this search for the sources of Shakespeare from which he gathered his themes for example, in Hollinsett's history and then he would extrapolate a wall picture what he thought as Shakespeare's own wall picture. So, he went into the old method Tillard is typical when he analyzes spaces from Tillard's and Crusader to discover and underline underlying organic scheme described as a great chain of being. The wall order hinted that by Shakespeare in Ulysses piece when he calls degree the letter to all high designs and named by Pope in the Assay of Men the vast chain of being. So, he gives an explanation how one takes to the old sources. The metaphors have to express the unimaginable planetude of God's creation is unfaltering order and its ultimate unity. So, this chain the chain of being which goes from the height to the lowest ladder the chain stretch from the foot of God's throne to the meanest of inanimate objects. Every speck of creation was a link in the chain. Tillard's view is conservative and such positions were challenged by many critic. Greenblatt famously called it Elephant's Graveyard. There was a famous quote in literary study. The approach of the new historicist was to make a parallel reading of literary and non-literary text appearing in the same historical epoch to find out ideas that was circulated during that period. So, you have to find out during that time any other text maybe if that text too and which would find out how it was circulated during that period. Thus this kind of reading enables the critic to find equal weightage to both literary as well as non-literary to the most canonical text to the non-canonical text. A follower of new historicist approach declared it as the and Montrose this famous quote from him is the textuality of history and the historicity of text. So, he emphasized that the new historicist method approach the textuality of history and the historicity of text. It is a process which tries to find out all the traces of the past that is replicated in the literary text. It may sound like an over simplification, but it is logical to state that new historicism therefore, is political is it not? In his approach and was highly influenced by Marx and then Foucault it had its impact because the economic strata, the genealogical strata, the way that you go into the cultural studies specially Raymond Williams will also be one of the way that you look at the power structure of understanding a text. The same can be said of the school called cultural materialist that appeared in England during the same period, but they were different in their approach if not fundamentally distanced. Here lies the basic difference between cultural materialism I think many of you are familiar with that and new historicism what would the cultural materialist did though alike in his approach were concerned about the space for subversion, but new historicists did not consider a scope for subversion they did not think it even fit that they would call it subversion. They considered every text and its circulation in the circulation of ideas or circulation of energy as Green Broad had said were governed by ideological apparatus. There was a ideological apparatus in this regard the comment of Richard Wilson is important he says under the shadow of Foucault each chapter of Renasa self fashioning ended in murder of execution or execution with the subject overpowered by social institution. Well, so these are the context that we are talking about power, coercion, containment versus rebellion, subversion for one thing they usually need a periods text characteristically those of the Renasa and romantic errors where the fit case studies that were to be studied and as contestatory reflective of the time socio political forces. So, they were seen as power from the standpoint of power from the standpoint of coercion, containment versus rebellion and subversion. Secondly, the new historicists saw everything as a text and went outside of the canon what you consider the text had no canonical order at all anything can become a text an interview a memory recollected orally or verbally also anything an anecdote or a diary could become a text and would become the contextualizing representative examining for instant private letters, obscure public documents, documents which had no value at all those documents would also be fished out and forgotten minor literary text and even almost specially public spectacles and displays in the analysis of the workings of social power. So, let us now come to the practitioners of this new historicism of course, the key figure is Stephen Greenblatt and Chris Greenblatt invisible bullets is one of the pioneering pioneering works to set new historicists method at his force. So, it was in the 1980s and towards the end of the 80s we find that he new historicism has already come to come to the fore of literary criticism. In the seminal work he sets for the agenda of his school of thinking the influence of Foucault is unmistakable when he finds the subversions and its containment found in a particular historical period are the products of power when you come into power then you found that somewhere or the other he has been influenced by Foucault and serves his purpose only. His case study Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry V he studies both the text against the account of scientist and mathematician Thomas Harris visit Virginia he comments, he comments Shakespeare's Henry plays like Harriet in the New World can be seen to confirm the Machiavellian hypothesis of the origin of princely power in force and proud even as they draw the audience irresistibly towards the celebration of that power well. So, he is out of very influential accounts of the NASA literary studies naturally and careful somewhere or the other it is almost synonymous with Shakespeare's studies or Renasa studies even though he has brought in a new form of criticism the new historicism. Greenville is a Shakespearean who has been called easily the most prominent Renasa scholar of his generation. He has dubbed his critical approach which he downplays as merely a way of thinking about literature in context rather than a set of proposition or dogmas and in 1982 when he edited this special number of periodical genre he reissued as the power of forms in the English Renasa and in his introduction this was a very very famous introduction the power of forms in English Renasa he laid claim to an interest in the new historicism and level that has since gained general currency. The most influential strain of criticism over the last 25 years with its view that literary creations are cultural formations he was talking about forms the power of forms shaped by the circulation of social energy. So, by now I hope you have understood that this circulation which comes through that energy and the forms which ultimately intervene or give contribute to the representation. If Greenville's interest in history was first focused during his Cambridge studies it was also given a radical edge by Raymond Williams Marxism. All power structures including those within the university seemed professional for him. Boundary especially those between academic disciplines where or there also to be broken and a more focused concern with the cultural forms of power. If we have it in his way according to the new historicist way we will have no departments everywhere we will be not the every department will go into the interdisciplinary form and there will be no no provisions for power forms of power. This the realm of power therefore, that is what he had emphasized it is not that power does not allow a critic of it, but knows well how to contain it. Subversion is possible only within the realm of power. So, there is no question of subversion at all it is clear to understand that through this new historicist angle all other texts can be read and analyzed. A study of the past assumed mainstream grand narratives and instead focused on out of the out of the way anecdotes. That is why I was telling you that there was a close connection between postmodernism and poststructurism. In the sense that there were so many mini narratives which came out there were colorful footnotes, but as epiphanic disturbances. This this was what it was said that the out of the anecdotes can be quoted as mere colorful not as mere colorful footnotes, but as epiphanic disturbances in the surface of things capable of inspiring unexpected insights into culture. So, they are not in the margins they come as disturbances in the main surface. In keeping with this new historicism form was usually the essay rather than the monolithic monograph. Therefore, we will go later into this we will discuss this where in the journal representations Stephen Greenblatt had himself shown how it is through the essay form which was itself incomplete at the same time it was not something dogmatic, but it was in the essay form that new historicism could come out in practice. Therefore, new historicism was about trying to imagine and analyze works of art and literary art not as separate from the world that surrounds them, but as one kind of negotiation and exchange with the world. So, this is where we were talking about the circulation of social energy and the negotiation and exchange with the world between the total artist and the and the society in its totality. If you talk about the totality of society we understand the different disturbances which occur in the society. Works of art that we encounter are not raw they are cooked says Stephen Greenblatt. I am interested in the cooking and what the ingredients way and where they come from. Some scholars say that Greenblatt's critical approach can obscure the shaping role of the artist Stephen. So, the whole idea of genius might appear antithetical to the new historicist point of view. Greenblatt does seem a little uncomfortable talking about whether Shakespeare was a genius or not. So, this question of genius ultimately becomes an enigma or paradoxical. So, they need to be aware of this poetics of culture. He was very happy with this term the poetics of culture then new historicism. So, Greenblatt questions a strictly materialistic definition of power in which forms of repression can ultimately be traced back to the individual or corporate ideology, ideologies of monarchs, ministers, administrators, how they have influenced the state, what was the hierarchy of power, how was it that it influenced the production of literature or not, text manufacture as well as reflect cultural codes. Not only is literature a tissue of implicit reflexes of thought, but it also has the capacity to act upon such a network and modify it. So, it is somewhat close to materialism right. This is more explicitly argued in the introduction to his Renasa self fashioning where 16th century culture is described as multiple and the making of individual identity was a site of possible conflict. So, what was this individual identity? It was the convergence of so many codes or so many forms that was in the society. The impact of his approach within his field he attributes the existence of such a strong counterpoint for such a long time. The counterpoint is Hyrule Bloom who would argue that great works of art are entirely transcendent both of their own time and of us. Greenblatt on the other hand says he is interested in learning how all works of art relate to the historical and cultural and social world which they come from and which I come from. It is not just historical thing he says, it is our own existence what it means to be here now. So, it is almost you take in the entire aspect of this collective consciousness or whatever you can call it. Greenblatt discovers complex indicators of unstable ideologies and radical questionings about basic human varieties from the least formal witness. So, you come into not non-canonical texts from witnesses from anecdotes, diary entries, official non-official prose among other sources. The Norton Shakespeare which he edited was a very different anthology that he created right. Despite this reluctance it is possible to draw out some key areas of consistency in new historicist practice and to examine the critical foundation. One of the main thrusts of the description was of course, laid out by Gallagher and Greenblatt in practicing new historicism and it is most easily understood if it is related to the works of the German Romantic thinker Johann Gottfried von Herder. Herder proposes that the character of a national literature is related to the nature of the language. The linguistic imperialism whatever you can call it in which it is written both are seem to be conditioned by the geographical specificity specificity of that nation as if language grows organically nourished by particular kind of soil and literature in its turn emerges organically from that language. This was Herder who had said that literature is related to the nature of the language in which it is written from the soil from the place where it has come from the different organic structures that literature comes out. This suggests that every cultural product since it is nourished by the same conditions is related to every other product in a given culture and thus any text becomes part of a network of relation. So, whatever comes out from that it becomes a network of production while it is possible to relate this internal objects straight forwardly to each other the connections between different cultures and different periods can be established only in the basis of analogy not identity. So, this was Herder well. So, the success of the new historicism actually because it had its sway for almost 25 years is mostly in its style because it emphasized its stature as a practice more or less I think this was one of the literary criticism which was absolutely practically formulated practically implemented and it also developed a house style particularly centered on the journal representatives representations. The key feature was a preference for the essay rather than the book length study. The essay is particularly apt for new historicism because it necessarily partial offering only a glimpse of the larger narrative. The use of anecdotes again anecdotes are memorable very personal very interesting and therefore, the open up something beyond them and they are capable of uncovering then neglected the strange or the unfamiliar and anecdotes are counter historical in every sense. They will just give a different opinion altogether of what history say and a deliberate impurity of critical origins. Therefore, you cannot pinpoint then say that this is the methodology that new historicism takes. In the attention to notions of culture new historicist's great extents to combine insights form a variety of thinkers naturally and disciplines in developing an eclectic methodology while a figure such as Herder inspires some key concerns and principles about the way that literature comes out of as a organic whole. There is also a range of more contemporary thinkers to whom frequent references may see if among these influences or have been Raymond Williams, Mitchell Foucault and Clifford Goetz. So, it is a set concern with the relation between discourse and a broad conception of culture. Thus, the cultural materialism of Williams and his insistence on politicized etymologies may be combined with Foucault's genealogical approach to history and gives descriptive and narrative anthropology. Well, coming to another key figure of new historicism Louis Montrose who had talked about the historicity of text and the textuality of history. The central link between this complementary senses of literature and history is best expressed in a resonant and much quoted phrase from Louis Montrose. The charismatic form in which this is expressed is itself a clear indication of the inextricability of this axiomatic assumptions where the historicity of text and the textuality of history becomes a sort of a charismatic. Kiasmas took a different stand when he embarked upon the study of Midsummer's Night Dream. When he studied Midsummer's Night Dream Shakespeare's, he took recourse to psychoanalytic angle in the well known anthology Wilson and Dutton believes such psychoanalytic approach is unusual for new historicism which generally conquers with Foucault's dismissal of Freud. It begins with an anecdote recounting a dream of a particular foreman a conjurer during Elizabethan times who had a semi-erotic dream of the Virgin Queen. He deals with the politics of unconscious to analyze the case of foreman to find a cultural contours of a psyche that is male and as distinctively Elizabethan. So, we find here when he looks into it that he faces some of the haunting nightmares of Elizabethan psyche and yet it sanctions a relationship of gender and power and how it is reflected in the text of Shakespeare. Well, another key figure is Leonor Teenhouse and his criticism can be analyzed in his essay again all of them based their case studies on Renasa's studies and Midsummer's Night Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VII, Henry VIII. He says if we take the example of Midsummer's Night Dream a place surely characteristic of Shakespeare's romantic comedies we can see that a problem which the authority has to master is a problem with authority itself authority grown or k. The play for him though offers a space for subversion and escape basically provides opportunity for the authority to consolidate its position. So, therefore, coming to the end of it all we see how that new historicism literary texts are embedded in history, surfaced with it and traversed by its forces and energies. It becomes the part of the historical process, but at the same time history is itself a textual construction. So, we have to understand that history itself also is a textual construction. In other words there is no unmediated access to historical events and the texts that historians see used to construct their histories thinking of text in the wider sense are always in need of interpretation. History is only one of the texts which are in the historical process. Therefore, all these texts have to be intervened has to be interrogated have to be interpreted. History is always a question of representation and any representation has a formal dimension. So, the historian has an obligation as Orwell says to preserve the memory of the past and that the historian can find a common meaning in the text of this course. So, one has to find the history of the traces or the way that the circulation of energy goes on between the artist and the totalitarian totalizing society. The method of new historicism is different to all the historicist method we had already seen this. Therefore, the discussion that we will take place today is in spite of certain clearly identifiable methodological features the status of new historicism as theory has always been problematic. So, you have to discuss this why it has been problematic even green blood was not happy with new historicism. New historicism asserted the need to see it as a form of practice rather than as theory. So, it is more a form of practice than as theory new as the culture poetics of culture we can call it that. New historicism resisted cause to establish any theoretical framework that would stand independent of the analysis of a particular cultural object. New historicism breaks distorting the concerns of the past in favor of a present intervention. So, it is a question of where the past cannot be distorted in the manner of the present intervention, but the past can be modified or the past can modify the present intervention. While new historicism is superficially interested in ordinary culture this is some of the ambiguities or contradiction it actually maintains a street hierarchy of cultural products of verbal elements that occupy the larger portion of critical or thought activity. Then some of the typical questions which may be asked are there words in the text that have changed the meaning from the time of the writing when you look at the word. How are events interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author? How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical cultural text from the same period. So, if you compare with other you know canons or non canonical text which are there whether an interview or an anecdote or a diary or anything which is there in that period how does it differ from that. How can we use a literary work to map the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerge or or end the cultures in which the work has been interpreted. So, to conclude the whole method of new historicism relies upon closed reading of literary and non literary text to uncover the scheme of ideology at work. Concept of the informed reader comes in readers are situated in a common cultural historical setting and are shaped by dominant discourses and ideologies not only dominant, but those which are also in the margins. Whilst new historicist readings of several works and their relation to different cultures have appeared there is arguably more of a relevant set of associations between early modern society during Dharanasa and its writing and also other cultural forms that in any subsequent literary histories. Therefore, all new historicism did was to revert to the well tried technique of putting literature into its historical context. The work cited Green Black a lot of his books then Renasa self-fashioning learning to curse marvelous possessions then Hamlet's negotiating Hamlet then we have Tillyard, Richard Wilson and Guernin Wilford and the rest. Thanks.