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CU-MA-Eng-SEM-IV-Literary Theory II

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economically similar to guys. The rules are a social alternate instead of searching for a transformation in this capitalist system. Jennifer Wicke defines materialist feminism as a feminism that insists on inspecting the cloth situations below which social arrangements, consisting of the ones of gender hierarchy, increase materialist feminism avoids seeing this gender hierarchy because the impact of a novel patriarchy and as an alternative gauges the internet of social and psychic members of the family that make up a cloth, historic moment. She states that materialist feminism argues that cloth situations of every kind play a critical function withinside the social manufacturing of gender and assays the distinctive approaches wherein girls collaborate and take part in those productions. Material feminism additionally considers how ladies and men of numerous races and ethnicities are saved of their decrease financial repute because of an imbalance of strength that privileges people who have already got privilege, thereby defensive the repute quo. Materialist feminists ask whether or not human beings have get right of entry to to loose education, if they could pursue careers, have get right of entry to or possibility to come to be wealthy, and if now no longer, what financial or social constraints are stopping them from doing so, and the way this may be changed. MARXIST FEMINISM: is a philosophical variation of feminism that includes and extends Marxist principle. Marxist feminism analyzes the approaches wherein girls are exploited via capitalism and the person possession of personal property. According to Marxist feminists, girls's liberation can best be done with the aid of using dismantling the capitalist structures wherein they contend tons of girls's exertions is uncompensated. Marxist feminists increase conventional Marxist evaluation with the aid of using making use of it to unpaid home exertions and intercourse members of the family. Because of its basis in historic materialism, Marxist feminism is just like socialist feminism and, to an extra degree, materialist feminism. The latter location extra emphasis on what they take into account the \"reductionist barriers of Marxist principle however, as Martha E. Gimenez notes in her exploration of the variations among Marxist and materialist feminism, clean strains of theoretical demarcation among and inside those umbrella phrases are particularly tough to establish. Marxism follows the improvement of oppression and sophistication department withinside the evolution of human society via the improvement and enterprise of wealth and manufacturing and concludes the evolution of oppressive societal shape to be relative to the evolution of oppressive own circle of relatives’ structures, i.e., the normalization of oppressing the girl intercourse marks or coincides to the start of oppressive society in general. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), Friedrich Engels writes approximately the earliest origins of the own circle of relative’s shape, social hierarchy, and the idea of wealth, drawing from each historical and modern study. He concludes that girls at the beginning had a better social repute and same attention in exertions, and particularly, best 201 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

girls have been positive to proportion a own circle of relatives name. As the earliest guys did now no longer even proportion the own circle of relative’s name, Engels says, they did now no longer understand for positive who their kids have been or advantage from inheritance. When agriculture first have become considerable and the abundance turned into taken into consideration male wealth, because it turned into sourced from the male paintings surroundings farfar from the home, a deeper want for male lineage and inheritance turned into founded. To obtain that want, girls have been now no longer best granted their long- sought monogamy however compelled into it as a part of home servitude, even as men pursued a hushed subculture of hetaerism. Engels describes this example as coincidental to the beginnings of compelled servitude as a dominant characteristic of society, main ultimately to a European subculture of sophistication oppression, in which the kids of the bad have been predicted to be servants of the rich. Engels rewrites a quote on this book, through himself and Marx from 1846, The first department of hard work is that among guy and girl for the propagation of children, to say, the primary magnificence competition that looks in records coincides with the improvement of the antagonism among guy and girl in monogamous marriage, and the primary magnificence oppression coincides with that of the woman intercourse through the male. 9.6 SUMMARY  Irigaray describes herself as reading each the analysts and the philosophers. Perhaps the maximum well-known vital device hired with the aid of using Irigaray is mimesis. Mimesis is a method of resubmitting ladies to stereotypical perspectives of ladies so as to name the perspectives themselves into question. Key to mimesis is that the stereotypical perspectives aren't repeated faithfully.  Irigaray surely shows that she can be able to now no longer redefine femininity due to the fact it might intrude with ladies redefining themselves for themselves.  Irigaray surely shows that she can be able to now no longer redefine femininity due to the fact it might intrude with ladies redefining themselves for themselves.  Since Irigaray is of the same opinion with Lacan that one have to input language (culture) on the way to be a problem, she believes that language itself have to extrade if ladies are to have their very own subjectivity this is diagnosed at a cultural level. She believes that language generally excludes ladies from an energetic problem function. Further, inclusion of ladies withinside the contemporary shape of subjectivity isn't the solution.  Irigaray makes use of her analyses of the male philosophers to talk about the subsequent issues which can be critical to her ethics: innovative relationships among women and men that aren't primarily based totally in reproduction, separate ‘places’ for women and men (emotional and embodied), marvel on the 202 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

distinction of the other, acknowledgement of finiteness and intersubjectivity, and an embodied divinity.  Irigaray refuses to belong to anybody organization withinside the feminist motion due to the fact she believes that there may be a bent for organizations to set themselves up in opposition to every other. When organizations withinside the ladies’s motion combat every other, this detracts from the general aim of looking to definitely regulate the social, political, and symbolic function of ladies.  Irigaray’s use of strategic essentialism has been criticized as essentialism itself-or of endorsing the notion that social conduct follows from biology. The look of her translated paintings withinside the United States changed into met with first rate opposition.  Irigaray has been criticized-specifically with the aid of using materialist feminists- on account that she privileges questions of mental oppression over social/cloth oppression. The difficulty is that the psychoanalytic discourse that Irigaray is based upon-despite the fact that she is vital of it-universalizes and abstracts farfar from cloth situations which can be of principal difficulty to feminism.  This unique trouble has its origins in a convention on \"The Politics of Postcoloniality\" prepared with the aid of using the editors and held at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in October 2003.  Despite the worries of critics including San Juan, Aijaz Ahmad, and Ella Shohat, postcolonial research is still imagined with the aid of using postcolonial critics as a shape of intellectualism this is specifically political.  Irigaray states that Sexual Differentiation isn't a dominant machine however a cultural exercise in which in, politics, history, literature, law, way of life act as dealers which support and empower it further. Irigaray additionally tips at the brand-new opportunities Sexual Differentiation can offer, if ladies begin speakme differently, thereby making it achievable to extrade the means of being a girl itself. Irigaray herself is thought for her particular writing fashion which is known as as “Mimesis”. 9.7 KEYWORDS  Feminism - the notion that ladies ought to have the identical rights and possibilities as men.  Postcolonialism - frequently addresses the issues and effects of the decolonization of a coutry, mainly questions regarding the political and cultural independence of previously subjugated people, and issues consisting of racialism and colonialism. A variety of literary concept has developed across the subject.  Materialist feminists – highlights capitalism and patriarchy as primary in expertise ladies's oppression. Under materialist feminism, gender is visible as a 203 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

social construct, and society forces gender roles, consisting of bearing children, onto ladies. Materialist feminism's best imaginative and prescient is a society wherein ladies are handled socially and economically similar to men.  Essentialism – a notion that matters have a hard and fast of traits which lead them to what they are, and that the undertaking of technology and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is previous to existence.  Mimesis - Mimesis is a time period utilized in philosophy and literary criticism. It describes the system of imitation or mimicry via which artists painting and interpret the world. Mimesis isn't a literary tool or technique, however as a substitute a manner of considering a piece of art 9.8 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1.How Irigrary described mother daughter realtionship ___________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ 2. Give the utopian ideals dealt by Irigrary ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 9.9 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions 204 Short Questions 1. Define – misesis 2. Give any three important thoughts of Luce Irigrary 3. State Irigrary as Marxist feminist 4. Write the utopian ideals dealt by Irigrary 5. Compare materialist and Marxist feminism Long Questions 1. Describe the ideologies are dealt in ‘When the Goods Get Together’ 2. How did Irigrary state the sexual difference? 3. Write the life and achievements of Luce Irigrary in detail 4. Discuss what is Irigrary’s opinion on feminist movement 5. Write an essay on Irigrary’s theories on subjectivity B. Multiple Choice Questions 1.Irigaray maintains that the theories of subjectivity developed by ____ and Lacan a. Homi Bhabha CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

b. Freud c. Edward Said d. Elaine Showalter 2. Irigaray states that ____ Differentiation is not a dominant system but a cultural practice a. Sexual b. Cultural c. Material d. National 3. She believes that ____ typically excludes women from an active subject position a. Culture b. Feminism c. Language d. Women 4. Irigaray gives an expression to her ___ Ideals in Sexes and the Genealogies. a. Utopian b. Language c. Oriental d. Colonial 5. ________ is integral to both Lacan and Irigaray. a. Feminism b. Colonialism c. Post colonialism d. Language Answers 1-b, 2-a, 3-c. 4-a, 5-d 9.10REFERENCES References book 205  Irigrary, Luce (1985). The Sex Which is Not One. Cornell University Press Textbook references CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Stone, Alice (2002). Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference. UK: Cambridge University Press Website  https://englishsummary.com/goods-gettogether-irigaray/  https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wpcontent/files_mf/rp43_article1_whitford_ir igarayfemailimaginary.pdf 206 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT -10: STEPHENGREENBLATT“COUNTERHISTORYANDA NECDOTE” STRUCTURE 10.0 Learning Objectives 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Reviews 10.3 Summary 10.4 Keywords 10.5 Learning Activity 10.6Unit End Questions 10.7 References 10.0LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Describe the concepts of Stephen Jay Greenblatt  Identify the new historisim  State the quality of anecdote  List the imapsts of new counter history and anecdote 10.1INTRODUCTION Stephen Jay Greenblatt was born in 1943, an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (2015) and the general editor and a contributor to The Norton Anthology of English Literature Greenblatt is one of the founders of new historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as cultural poetics; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations, which often publishes articles by new historicists. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on The New York Times Best Seller list for nine weeks. He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2012 and the

National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2011 for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Greenblatt first used the term New Historicism in his 1982 introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance wherein he uses Queen Elizabeth I's bitter reaction to the revival of Shakespeare's Richard II on the eve of the Essex rebellion\" to illustrate the \"mutual permeability of the literary and the historical. New Historicism is regarded by many to have influenced \"every traditional period of English literary history. Some critics have charged that it is \"antithetical to literary and aesthetic value, that it reduces the historical to the literary or the literary to the historical, that it denies human agency and creativity, that it is somehow out to subvert the politics of cultural and critical theory and that it is anti-theoretical. Scholars have observed that New Historicism is, in fact, neither new nor historical. Others praise New Historicism as a collection of practices employed by critics to gain a more comprehensive understanding of literature by considering it in historical context while treating history itself as \"historically contingent on the present in which is constructed. As stated by Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, the approach of New Historicism has been \"the most influential strand of criticism over the last 25 years, with its view that literary creations are cultural formations shaped by 'the circulation of social energy'. When told that several American job advertisements were requesting responses from experts in New Historicism, Greenblatt remembered thinking: You've got to be kidding. You know it was just something we made up!' I began to see there were institutional consequences to what seemed like a not particularly deeply thought-out term. He has also said that my deep, ongoing interest is in the relation between literature and history, the process through which certain remarkable works of art are at once embedded in a highly specific life-world and seem to pull free of that life-world. I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago. 10.2REVIEW Greenblatt's works on New Historicism and cultural poetics include Practicing New Historicism (2000) (with Catherine Gallagher), in which Greenblatt discusses how they appear as the 'touch of the real and Towards a Poetics of Culture (1987), in which Greenblatt asserts that the question of how art and society are interrelated, as posed by Jean-François Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, cannot be answered by appealing to a single theoretical stance. Renaissance Self-Fashioning and the introduction to the Norton Shakespeare are regarded as good examples of Greenblatt's application of new historicist practices. New Historicism acknowledges that any criticism of a work is colored by the critic's beliefs, social status, and other factors. Many New Historicists begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves, their backgrounds, and their prejudices. Both the work and the reader 208 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

are affected by everything that has influenced them. New Historicism thus represents a significant change from previous critical theories like New Criticism, because its main focus is to look at many elements outside of the work, instead of reading the text in isolation. With a simple declarative statement, noted Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt laid the foundation for what would become New Historicism, a mode of cultural inquiry that would change the direction of literary theory in the final two decades of the twentieth century. In his seminal volume Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (1988), Greenblatt acknowledges, “I began with the desire to speak to the dead. Desire is the keystone of New Historical inquiry, which aims to explore the past through its documents and to do so not as objective observers governed solely by reason, but as subjective participants fully cognizant that scholarly impartiality is impossible. Human interests are never far from human emotions; thus, human passion governs human inquiry. New Historicism, in its efforts to examine the material and ideological elements that governed people’s lives in specific time periods, is “conversing with the dead” through examining literary and historical texts; but this conversation is controlled by the living. In their approach to the past, New Historians can be considered time-traveling reporters. Primarily, these critics are interested in how literature functions as a political tool, as a by- product of power, and as part of cultural reproduction. New Historicism is characterized by a desire to understand not only the work of literature— indeed, any creative work—but also the context in which the work was composed. In particular, New Historicism wants to understand the cultural ideologies (belief systems) present at the time a work was formed. For New Historicists, the question is not solely, What is this poem about? but What cultural contexts informed the writing of this poem? Answers to the latter question are discerned through consideration of related texts from the same time period. Unlike New Criticism, a theoretical predecessor that insisted a literary work stand independent of its author, culture, and era, New Historicists insist the opposite. A work can be understood only by considering it in the surrounding framework of ideas circulating at the time of its composition. In contrast, the art for art’s sake movement, frequently associated with New Criticism, sought to distance art and literature from the cultural contexts of their derivation. New Historians refuse to place literature in a vacuum, apart from power structures. They seek to establish a relationship between sources of power within a society and the works of art and literature produced by a society. New Historicists are not seeking “truths” about civilization. Indeed, truths for New Historians are not givens; rather, truths are cultural constructs. What is “true” in a society depends on who or what is in power. For New Historicists, history is not a neat compilation of events over time, but a complex and tangled record of the evolution of ideas. They ask questions such as, What were humans thinking, when were they thinking it, and why were they thinking it? During the Renaissance, for example, why did people believe 209 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

in the Great Chain of Being, in which pampered kings and queens were only one link from God and hardworking peasants only one link above beasts? For the New Historicists, textual analysis can never reveal the truths of a society or an age, but it may provide clues to an understanding of the social construction of truth. Despite its emergence and popularity in Renaissance studies, New Historical approaches can be applied to various genres and eras of literature. All types of cultural “texts,” from novels to comic books, from films to postcards, from architecture to furnishings, can be accessed and analyzed through the methodologies of New Historicism. For the purposes of this overview, examples of New Historical methods will be drawn primarily from poetry. The word “new” seemingly separates New Historicism as a mode of inquiry from “old” historical approaches, but the claim that there are “old” and “new” approaches is perhaps a misnomer. Many traditional historical approaches to literary and cultural analysis are still in practice; this fact suggests that they are not outdated, nor have they been replaced by New Historicism. To better understand how New Historicism is distinct from its predecessors and contemporaries in the field of historical inquiry, it is important to understand the ways in which their various theories and methodologies diverge. Traditional historical inquiry suggests that to understand a work of literature, the scholar must first investigate the author’s life and background, the society in which the author lived, and the prevailing ideas of the time. Traditional historical critics give preeminence to the literary text, with historical texts providing supporting background material. For instance, an understanding of the sewer system, or the lack of one, in eighteenth century London elucidates the black humor of Jonathan Swift’s poem “A Description of a City Shower” (1710), which lists in graphic detail the various items of refuse that wash through the streets of the city during a rainstorm. As Steven Lynn points out in Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory (1994), “The modern reader who is unaware of the sanitary problems in Swift’s day may find the poem’s imagery incredible.” Thus, one aspect of traditional historical criticism is to prove the veracity of a literary text. The content of the poem is valid because historical data supports its description of a London street at the time in which the poem was composed. Biographical criticism is closely connected to historical criticism as it relates the author’s life events or beliefs to the work produced. However, despite connections between lived experiences and creative expression, it is simplistic to equate the life of the poet with his or her poetry, and then go no further. American poet Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” (1966) conjures up images of a brutish father, but her biography provides no such evidence of abuse; the fact that her father died when she was a child seems the most injurious of his crimes. Still, this fact allows an entry into the poem, and information about her subsequent relationships with men provides even greater insight. Biographical research allows scholars to connect the “Daddy” of the title with various men in Plath’s life; it becomes a metaphor for the men who rejected the poet over her lifetime, and not her particular birth father. 210 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

There are significant differences between New Historicism and traditional historical research. Historians generally believe in documented facts and a linear progression of civilization. They believe certain eras can be characterized by a specific belief system; for instance, the Great Chain of Being is considered by traditional historians to be an organizing principle for Elizabethan society. New Historicists resist such codifying and are more likely to eschew facts and reveal the flaws in grand schematics. Another important difference is the New Historicist’s predilection for minutiae rather than for extant texts, and their tendency to reach “local” conclusions rather than proclaim overarching judgments. Rather than explicate an entire work like John Milton’s twelve-book Paradise Lost (1667), a New Historicist will focus on a few lines of various texts, perhaps a passage from book 1 of Paradise Lost, a paragraph from a religious treatise of the era, and a paragraph from a surviving letter from Milton to his daughter, and then treat the three partial texts as equals. Unlike traditional historical approaches that rely on historical information as a subtext for greater understanding of a literary work, New Historicism refuses to privilege either the literary or the historical text. Instead, practitioners of New Historicism explore a history of ideas that employs the technique of cross-reading. Literary texts are read to glean history and historical texts are read to understand literature. The decade of the 1980’s marked the emergence of New Historicism as a recognized mode of inquiry in literary and cultural studies. It followed on the heels of and in reaction to New Criticism (1940’s-1970’s), which maintained that the text of a literary work was sacrosanct. New Critics focused exclusively on properties integral to a poem, particularly its formal and linguistic qualities, and rejected biographical or historical contexts as unnecessary to an understanding and appreciation of a poem. The poet, the era, and the circumstances of a poem’s composition were of no concern to the New Critics. The poem, in and of itself, provided the key to understanding. Prior to the influx of new critical approaches, literary scholars had engaged in historical research, but the New Historicism that emerged in the 1980’s was unlike its forerunners. Practitioners of New Historicism were informed by other more radical criticisms that developed in the 1970’s, including reader-response, feminist, and Marxist approaches. Questioning the status quo was a common practice on university and college campuses, where many emerging theorists, such as French philosopher-historian Michel Foucault and American literary historian Greenblatt, were professors. Particularly in light of the Civil Rights and women’s movements and of organized opposition to the Vietnam War, rethinking the status quo was popular in higher education. Foucault, Greenblatt, and others extended this line of questioning back through time and reexamined accepted historical truths. This reexamination led to their publications as New Historicists: Foucault’s Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (1975, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1977) and Greenblatt’s Shakespearean Negotiations. Foucault had been questioning social institutions since the early 1960’s, publishing, among other works, Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à 211 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

l’âge classique (1961; Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, 1965), which examines the social construction of madness and its accompanying discourse over a number of centuries, and Naissance de la clinique: Une Archéologie du regard médical (1963; The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, 1973), which looks at the establishment of medical hospitals and the training of doctors, again across an extended period of time. New Historicism was the new name for his approach, but Foucault preferred to think of himself as just another French intellectual. New Historicists embraced his ideas and borrowed liberally from his terminology as they engaged in countercultural inquiries of their own. While its main founder, Greenblatt, is a noted Renaissance scholar associated with the field of English literature, the range of New Historicists is vast. In addition to literary scholars, New Historicism includes cultural critics, anthropologists, and historians, all of whom work across the curriculum, utilizing methods from various disciplines and sharing epistemological tools. Given this diversity of backgrounds, interests, and methods, it is not surprising that disagreements emerge among New Historicists. Even Greenblatt regrets the term New Historicism; he prefers to call his approach a poetics of culture.In his introduction to The New Historicism (1989), editor H. Aram Veeser identifies five epistemological threads that connect practitioners of New Historicism. In conclusion, then, we might argue that, more than Fineman and Montrose or, for that matter, any other New Historicist, Greenblatt problematizes the anecdote as factual historical proof, even as he broadens the scope of its uses as a mode of figurative and narrative representation. I have tried to show here that, although anecdotal materials are generally regarded as unmediated, already substantiated, historically authorized documentary evidence from the perspective of those interested in reviving the category of the aesthetic and discerning poetic patterns in historiographical discourse, this is clearly far from being the case. It would appear, rather, that anecdotal materials and forms have been borrowed by practitioners of New Historicism as a means of generating new historiographical tools or perhaps even of suggesting new historiographical rules. In this regard, I have tried to clarify that Greenblatt’s use of historical and anecdotal evidence displays several modes of authorial intervention, all of which rely, more or less directly, on the way historians and their audiences frequently still seem to ascribe the same function(s) to historical evidence as their predecessors did in the late nineteenth century. What is at stake here, then, is the nature of the ‘‘reality’’ with which New Historicists appear to be concerned and their acknowledgment of the different claims the literary and the nonliterary make upon the actual. Hayden White has pointed out that historians are concerned with events that are in principle observable or perceivable and that can be ascribed to ‘‘specific time-space locations,’’ whereas writers of literature (poets, novelists, playwrights) ‘‘are concerned with both these kind of events and imagined, hypothetical, or invented ones.’’ In this essay I have tried to show that New Historicists combine these two categories 212 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

to extend their inquiry to events that are in principle conceivable or possible even as they are frequently constructed and nonfactual. Hence, their writings examine ‘units of social action small enough to hold within the fairly narrow boundaries of full analytical attention, accounts of events that can be accorded relative time-space locations within a range of possible, or even plausible, options, although they may not have taken place precisely where and when described. Remodeling historical reality ‘as it might have been,’ reviving the ways history is experienced and concretely reproduced by contemporary readers of literary history, the textual reproduction of anecdotal evidence enables the New Historicist mode of ‘literary’ history to sustain its links (discoursal and institutional) to literary artifacts, literary scholarship, and conventional historical discourse. Moreover, it is precisely this ‘imaginary’ conceivability which operates to restore explanatory force to New Historicist versions of reality by ‘expanding the conception of historical reality and meaning, extending ‘‘the levels of reality beyond all of our commonsense attempts to describe it in onedimensional or essentialist language. Finally, and no less significantly, by frequently interjecting into his historical accounts anecdotes from his personal history, Greenblatt illustrates that testimony by a ‘witness’ is no less ‘subjective’ than it is ‘objective’ and in so doing reinforces the authority of the subjective point of view that in literature typically determines the credibility of narrators and/or characters. In this way, Greenblatt revives some of the wonder of literature, demonstrating that the primacy of historical evidence over narrative is by no means conclusive. For historical evidence and ‘truth’ alone cannot generate empathy, nor can they enable readers to experience events as though they were their own, and isn’t this after all where the most valuable contribution of literature ‘really’ lies? 10.3SUMMARY  Greenblatt is one of the founders of new historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as cultural poetics; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term. Greenblatt has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields.  Greenblatt first used the term New Historicism in his 1982 introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance wherein he uses Queen Elizabeth I's bitter reaction to the revival of Shakespeare's Richard II on the eve of the Essex rebellion to illustrate the mutual permeability of the literary and the historical.  Greenblatt's works on New Historicism and cultural poetics include Practicing New Historicism (2000) (with Catherine Gallagher), in which Greenblatt discusses how they appear as the 'touch of the real and Towards a Poetics of Culture (1987), in which Greenblatt asserts that the question of how art and society are interrelated, as 213 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

posed by Jean-François Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, cannot be answered by appealing to a single theoretical stance.  New Historicism acknowledges that any criticism of a work is colored by the critic's beliefs, social status, and other factors. Many New Historicists begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves, their backgrounds, and their prejudices.  Unlike New Criticism, a theoretical predecessor that insisted a literary work stand independent of its author, culture, and era, New Historicists insist the opposite. A work can be understood only by considering it in the surrounding framework of ideas circulating at the time of its composition.  Traditional historical inquiry suggests that to understand a work of literature, the scholar must first investigate the author’s life and background, the society in which the author lived, and the prevailing ideas of the time. Traditional historical critics give preeminence to the literary text, with historical texts providing supporting background material.  While its main founder, Greenblatt, is a noted Renaissance scholar associated with the field of English literature, the range of New Historicists is vast. In addition to literary scholars, New Historicism includes cultural critics, anthropologists, and historians, all of whom work across the curriculum, utilizing methods from various disciplines and sharing epistemological tools.  Greenblatt revives some of the wonder of literature, demonstrating that the primacy of historical evidence over narrative is by no means conclusive. 10.4 KEY WORDS  Historicism – the theory that social and cultural phenomena are dertermined by history  Renaissance – The revival of European of art literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th -16th centuries. The culture and style of art and architecture developed during the Renaissance  Predecessor- the person who was in the job or position before the person who is in it now.  Pre-eminence –the fact surpassing all others; superiority.  Epistemological – realting to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope and the distrinction between justified belief and opinion  Aesthetic– is used to talk about beauty or art, and people’s appreciation  Witness- a person who sees something happen and who can tell others  Theorists– a person who develops ideas and principles about a particular subject in order to explain why things happen or exist 214 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Anthropologists -a person enganged in the practice of anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. 10.5 LEARNING ACTIVITES 1.How Greenblatt described his new historicism ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 2.Give a brief note about Greenblatt’s historicism ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 10.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. Define – historicism 2. Give any three important thoughts of Greenblatt 3. State Greenblatt as histornist 4. Write the elements of new historicism 5. Compare new historical ideas and traditional values Long Questions 1. Describe the ideologies are dealt in ‘Counter history and Anecdote’ 2. How did Greenblatt state the anecdote? 3. Write the life and achievements of Greenblatt 4. Discuss what is Greenblatt’s opinion on new historicism? 5. Write an essay on Greenblatt’s theories on subject and object B. Multiple Choice Questions 1.What is the observation of Greenblatt on New Historicism? a. an economic metaphor b. a social problem c. an individual problem d. a cultural problem 3. New Historicism acknowledges that any criticism of a work is colored by the critic's _ a. beliefs and social status b. beliets and norms c. personal status and economy 215 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

d. on cultural point of view 3. Greenblatt is a noted Renaissance scholar associated with the field of __ literature, the range of New Historicists is vast. a. French b. English c. Asian d. American 4. Traditional historical critics give preeminence to the literary ___ a. inquiry b. criticism c. reviews d. text 5.________ is one of the founders of new historicism a. Ajzas b. Greenblatt c. Edward Said d. Homi Bhabha Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-b. 4-d, 5-b 10.7REFERENCES References book  Greenblatt,(2001). Practicing New Hstoricism. University of Chicago Press. Textbook references  Greenblatt, Stephen (1965). Three modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Website  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Greenblatt 216 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)