November 2, 2011 [NEW HISTORICISM AND CULTURAL MATERIALISM]

This session will look at two practices of cultural history that are concerned with ways of conceiving the relations between fact and fiction, between history and cultural representation. We will explore what these cultural historians have to say about the use of cultural artifacts such as a cardinals hat, a tomb, or a stage play for the writing of cultural history. Both cultural materialism and new historicism originated in the 1980s and are indebted to the works of thinkers you have already met in this course: Michel Foucaults ideas on the operations of power and the works of Marxist historians. New Historicists and Cultural Materialists consider their work to be results of practices, not of theories. New Historicism (NH) and Cultural Materialism (CM) originated in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, in the US and in the UK respectively. Both were a reaction against past practices. NH and CM are still used today, but they start to be replaced. Both NH and CM tend to focus on the reciprocal relationship between history and literature (although NH does so more than CM; CM has a broader focus). Earlier literary criticism A good example of what NH and CM reacted against is E. M. W. Tillyards The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the age of Shakespeare (1942). In this work, history is seen as a fixed, factual background. The The in the title seems to suggest that it is possible to formulate one particular worldview. Also, Tillyards view is very conservative (ex: the Great Chain of Being biblical hierarchy of the world; one should stick to his place). Tillyard sees literature as mimetic, as mirroring history. This is one of the points NH and CM turned against. New criticism (1940s and 50s) Method: close reading (analyse littraire). Literature is seen as closed; according to this view literary works are self-referential objects. This what NH and CM acted against by bringing history back into the picture. The American approach: New Historicism New Historicism was coined by Stephen Greenblatt, a literary critic whose main focus has been the Renaissance / Shakespeare. Representations is New Historicisms main journal. Some of the main characteristics of NH are its attention for the particular; its conviction that meaning is created, and the central place of the anecdote. Other characteristics are: Historicity of texts / textuality of history o Both influence each other; traditional history: What happened? What does it tell about history? o New Historicism: How has an event been interpreted? What do interpretations tell us about the interpreters? o Hayden White tropes o Literature is not a mirror of historical facts, it is a dynamic force. NH gives a special place to literature, but other texts are taken into consideration. Social energy o Term coined by Greenblatt; o What happens when an object (or something else) moves from one social context to another? o

November 2, 2011 [NEW HISTORICISM AND CULTURAL MATERIALISM]

Displacement / transmigration Example Queen Elisabeth II play / power Example Louis Montrose: the Queen wanted the courtiers to see her as a distant lady, much like Laura in the works of Petrarch. Louis Montrose shows how the queen used the idea of Petrarchan women. Subversion and containment o Early Foucault: any resistance to power is built into power; inescapable. Example: carnival for a day people are allowed to do what they want to; to assert some sort of power themselves. Afterwards all turns back to normal. NH: court masks. Critique: this view leaves little room for change and agency o Late Foucault: power is placed on the level of micro politics. Therefore, there are more possibilities for resistance. (CM) Anecdote o Example: hat in article Greenblatt Figuratical Geertz (anthropologist, wrote about cockfight); a small element can be representative of bigger patterns. Thick description o Critique: 1. If you take a small thing for something bigger, then you refer to a homogenous bigger picture; 2. If you make use of a small anecdote, you have to get your facts right. Example: Greenblatt hat in museum. Greenblatt fitted text and context around his argument; he arranged it.

Exercise: Hamlet (written around 1600) where did the ghost come from? It is most likely that the ghost came from purgatory, yet in England the Anglican Church had rejected purgatory in 1563. Solution Greenblatt: theatre felt the concept was missing from culture. The English approach: Cultural Materialism The term Cultural Materialism was coined by Raymond Williams in his Marxism and Literature (1977). CM looks at contradictions, at the ways power can be subverted. See quote PowerPoint. Source for the possibility of resistance is the fragmented discourse of power. Williams was a Marxist critic. He made a distinction between residual, dominant and upcoming culture; these three are always present and sometimes they collide. The friction between the different discourses allows for the possibility of resistance. Points of conflicts are termed fault lines (see quote Stuart Hall). CM does not look at the individual will, it looks at discourses. CM: one is always looking from a contemporary perspective to the past. CM focuses on the ways the past is appropriated by the present (i.e. presentism). Catherine Belsey distanced herself a little from CM willing to historicize more than CM does. Her main focus is the way things change. Close reading: special place literary texts history at the level of the signifier.