New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism are closely related approaches that emerged in the 1980s. Both insist that literature cannot be understood apart from its historical context — but both go further than traditional "background" approaches by arguing that literature is not merely a reflection of history but an active participant in the cultural processes of its time.

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New Historicism

Origins

New Historicism emerged in American Renaissance studies in the early 1980s, primarily through the work of Stephen Greenblatt. It was a reaction against two dominant approaches:

1. New Criticism — which treated literary texts as self-contained objects, isolated from history
2. Old Historicism — which treated history as a "background" to literature, assuming that literature passively reflected the "spirit of the age"

Key Principles