新历史主义批评方法

Poetics critic wishes to emphasize.
key assumptions
that every human action is actually the effect of a network of material practices; that every act of unmasking, critique and opposition uses the tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes; that literary and non-literary "texts" are equally valuable; that no discourse, imaginative, scientific, or archival, gives access to unchanging truths, nor expresses inalterable human nature; that a critical method and a language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe.
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Assumption
New Hwk.baidu.comstoricism
New historicism redefines both a text and history. It asserts that an intricate connection exists between an aesthetic object -- a text or any work of art -- and society, while denying that a text can be evaluated in isolation from its cultural context. The societal concerns of the author, of the historical times evidenced in the work, and of other cultural elements exhibited in the text before us can devise a valid interpretation. This new approach to textual analysis questions the very act of how we can arrive at meaning for any human activity, whether it is a text, a social event, a longheld tradition, or a political act.
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“文化诗学”——强调历史文化语境的重建，强调文学 与其语境之间的互相塑造。
新历史主义作为一种文化批评，并不是在现实世界颠覆 现存社会制度，而是在文化思想领域对社会制度所依存的 政治思想原则加以质疑，从历史的对抗中发现被主流意识 形态所压抑的异己的不安定因素，并揭示其“意识形态遏 制” 过程的复杂性，进而对意识形态与社会文化做出自己 新的历史价值评判。
——H. Aram Veeser
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Methodology
New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its cultural context and to understand intellectual history through literature.
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Three areas of concern: The life of the author The social rules and dictates found within a text A reflection of a work’s historical situation as
going forward toward some known end. For Foucault, history is the complex interrelationship of a variety
discourses, the various ways of -- artistic, social, political,
period in history develops its own perceptions concerning the nature of reality, sets up its own acceptable and unacceptable standards of behavior, eastablishes its criteria for judging what it deems good or bad, and certifies what group of people articulate, protect, and defend the yardstick(标尺) whereby all established truths, values, and actions will be deemed acceptable.
evidenced in the text.
to unlock the textual meaning.
历史观研究方法：在新历史主义看来，历史存在形式的本质是一种 文本或一种话语，不可避免会带有叙事者的主观虚构和想象色彩， 历史真实只能是忽略阐释策略和阅读语境的相对真实。
文学观研究方法：新历史主义者认为，文本的产生和阐释特定的历 史语境，他们包蕴了社会物质性和历史文化性的一切内容。通过文 学与历史的互文性参照，可以考察特定时代的一切社会历史文化现 象。文学参与着历史进程，也参与着现实塑造。 “文化诗学” 研究方法：这是新历史主义批评的重要研究方法— —探究文本的文化因素，揭示文学的政治功能。在批评实践中， 新历史主义者试图探索和重构文学文本产生时的历史语境，把文 学文本置于广阔的文化背景中，打通本学文本与非文学文本，主 流文化与边缘文化的界限，旨在揭示文学文本内部和文学文本周 围的权利关系和意识形态的运作模式以及文化因素。
——thick description
Geertz uses this term to describe the seemingly insignificant details present in any cultural practice. By focusing on these details, one can reveal the inherent contradictory forces at work within a culture.
themselves and with nondiscursive practices--any
cultural institution such as a form of government.
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福柯的话语理论
The Episteme: Through language and thought, each
Borrowing this idea from Geertz, Cultural Poetics theorists declare that each separate discourse of a culture must be uncovered and analyzed in hopes of showing how all discourses interact with each other and with institutions ,peoples, and other elements which shapes a culture. It is the interaction among the many different discourses which shapes a culture and interconnects all human activities, including the writing, reading, and interpretation of a text that the Cultural
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福柯的权利理论
History is form of power. Since each era or people develop their own episteme, it is the episteme that controls that era or a group of people will view reality. History becomes the study and unearthing of a vast, complex web of interconnecting forces that ultimately determines what takes place in each culture or society.
Cultural Poetics view an aesthetic work as a social production, for them a text's meaning resides in the cutural system composed of the interlocking discourses of its author, the text, and its reader.
and so on -- that people think and talk about their world.
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Foucault
——archaeological examination of
the various discourses
Historians must expose each layer of discourse that comes together to shape a people's episteme. The historian must piece together the various discourses and their interconnections among
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Michel Foucault
what is history?
History is not linear -- it does not have a definite
beginning, a middle, and an end -- nor is it purposefully
福柯的权利观念给新历史主义文学批评的启示：文学文本以 及其他文学形式，是构建权利的工具。
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Clifford Geertz
——subjectivity of history
Caused by “information gap”
Gap between what our body tells us and what we have to know in order to function in society. Gap in society because society cannot know everything that happens among all its people.