New historicism and cultural materialism emerged in the early 1980s as prominent literary theories and came to represent a revival of interest in history and in historicising literature. Their proponents rejected both formalist criticism and earlier attempts to read literature in its historical context and defined new ways of thinking about literature in relation to history. This study explains the development of these theories and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices. The potential future direction for the theories is explored and the controversial debates about their validity in literary studies are discussed.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
General Editor's Preface.- List of Abbreviations.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction: Literature in History.- PART 1: THE TURN TO HISTORY Key Contexts and Theorists; New Historicism: Representations of History and Power; Cultural Poetics: After the New Historicism?; Cultural Materialism: Literature and Dissident Politics; New Historicism and Cultural Materialism Today.- PART 2: APPLICATIONS AND READINGS 'On the Edge of a Black and Incomprehensible Frenzy': An New Historicist Reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Producing the Subject: A New Historicist Reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilmans's The Yellow Wallpaper; Cultural Materialism and Reading Dissidence in(to) the Poetry of Alfred Tennyson; 'I Write it out in a Verse': Power, History and Colonialism in W.B.Yeat's PART 3: AFTERWORDS After History: Textuality and Historicity in New Historicism; The Importance of Not Concluding.- Annotated Bibliography.- Bibliography.- Index.
