The Dance of Text and History: Cultural Poetics and New Historicism

The Dance of Text and History: Cultural Poetics and New Historicism

History has been a focal point for humans for centuries and has contributed to the development of many other scientific fields. However, history has always been a subject of great debate: How is history made? How is it interpreted? While the traditional view of history suggests that the past can be written objectively and that historians can present events in a neutral manner, modern historical theories go beyond this by showing that historical writing is always shaped by a particular perspective and ideology. Approaches like New Historicism and Cultural Materialism argue that history is not just a chronological record of the past but is also a construct woven through social and cultural discourses. In this blog, we will explore the nature of historical writing, how it is shaped through texts and discourses, and the interaction between literature and history, showing that history is not merely a recounting of the past but also a discourse reflecting cultural and political power relations.

Studying literature is not just about reading words—it’s about uncovering the worlds hidden within them. To truly understand books, we must explore the past, society, power structures, and human experiences they reflect. Over time, different approaches have emerged to analyse literature. Among them, three major perspectives stand out: New Criticism, Old Historicism, and New Historicism (Cultural Poetics & Cultural Materialism).

New Criticism: The Text Stands Alone

From the 1940s to the 1960s, New Criticism dominated literary analysis. According to this approach, a literary text existed independently—it didn’t matter who wrote it, who read it, or what historical period it came from. What mattered was the text itself.

New Critics believed meaning could only be found within the words on the page. However, scholars like Stephen Greenblatt argued that this method was too limited. They believed literature couldn’t be fully understood without considering the world that shaped it.

Old Historicism: The Search for "Objective" History

Traditional historians, following Old Historicism, assumed that history could be written objectively. They believed it was possible to reconstruct an accurate and unbiased account of any event, era, or text.

New Historicists challenged this idea. They argued that history is always influenced by the perspectives of those who write it. Just like a novel, history is a story shaped by interpretation rather than an absolute truth.

New Historicism & Cultural Poetics: Literature as a Reflection of Power and Society

By the late 1970s, New Historicism (in the U.S.) and Cultural Materialism (in the U.K.) emerged as alternative approaches. These methods emphasized that literature is deeply connected to historical and social power structures.

According to this perspective:

📌Literature and history are intertwined. A text is influenced by its time period, but it also helps shape that period.

📌History is not absolute truth. Each era interprets past events differently, constructing its own version of reality.

📌Power and literature are inseparable. Texts either reinforce or challenge dominant ideologies.

Key Thinkers and Ideas in New Historicism

📖 D.A. Miller and Louis Montrose argued that literary texts are not just artistic works but also tools of power.

📖 Jonathan Goldberg claimed that each historical era develops its own unique "modes of power" and ways of perceiving truth.

📖 Stephen Greenblatt, in his essay Towards a Poetics of Culture (1987), suggested that no single theory can fully capture the complex relationship between literature and society.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, scholars like Catherine Gallagher, Jonathan Dollimore, Jerome McGann, and others expanded on these ideas. They blurred the boundaries between artistic and social production, treating literature as a cultural act deeply embedded in history.

Final Thoughts: Are Texts Just Words on a Page?

New Historicism and Cultural Poetics invite us to see literature as more than just a creative expression. They encourage us to ask deeper questions about power, ideology, and history.

If you’ve ever wondered while reading a book:

🔍 What was happening in the world when this was written?

🔍 Whose voices are heard, and whose are silenced?

🔍 Is this just a story, or is it reflecting something larger about its time?

Is it possible to study history and literature together?

Yes, and in fact, it is essential! Cultural Materialism and New Historicism examine literary texts not just as artistic works but also as historical and social documents. These two approaches argue that history and literature cannot be evaluated separately, inviting us to read with historical awareness.

CULTURAL MATERIALISM

• Rooted in Marxist thought, it believes that change is possible in all areas, from politics to culture.
• It claims that "literature can create change!" and argues that power structures can always be challenged.
• It analyses how societies' ways of thinking are shaped.

NEW HISTORICISM

• It emphasizes that culture influences everything, including literary texts and even critics themselves.
• It asserts that "texts are never born in a vacuum!" and stresses the importance of considering the social dynamics of the time when interpreting a work.
• It rejects classical historical approaches; history is not a straight line progressing toward a predetermined end but rather a result of many complex interactions.

MICHEL FOUCAULT: HISTORY AS A POWER MECHANISM

According to Foucault:

• History does not progress through simple cause-and-effect relationships.
• Each era has its own "episteme," meaning people define "truth" and "falsehood" based on the intellectual framework of their time.
• To understand history, one must carefully excavate its layers, much like an archaeologist.

CLIFFORD GEERTZ: CULTURE MAKES US WHO WE ARE

Geertz famously said, "There is no such thing as human nature, only culture."

• Culture is the invisible force that shapes a society's ways of thinking and behaviour.
• Understanding culture lies in the details. According to him, the "thick description" method reveals how even the simplest daily events can expose major social dynamics.

TEXTS, HISTORY, AND INTERPRETATION

• Literature is not merely an art form; it also reflects social and political events.
• A text is in constant interaction with its author, society, historical traditions, and readers.
• Every reading is a struggle, as the dynamics between the author, society, and reader are always shifting.

If we truly want to understand a text, we must evaluate it not just between the lines but within its historical and cultural context. While exploring the past, we also discover ourselves. Cultural Materialism and New Historicism offer us not just a deeper understanding of literature but of the world itself

WHAT CULTURAL POETICS REJECTS

• One-sided interpretations of a culture or historical era as a fixed truth.
• The idea is that historians can determine absolute “norms” and “truths.”
• The belief that writers and historians can be completely objective.
• The notion that literary texts exist independently of historical and social contexts.
• The assumption is that history is merely a background for literature rather than an active force shaping it.
• The claim that there is only one correct interpretation of a text.

WHAT CULTURAL POETICS ACCEPTS AND DOES

• It blurs the boundary between history and literature, treating them as interconnected.
• It acknowledges that definitive interpretations are impossible—too many voices have shaped history and texts, and we can never hear them all.
• It recognizes that power dynamics influence both literature and history.
• It sees texts as both shaped by and shaping social forces.
• It examines specific historical moments that influenced (or were influenced by) literary texts, using historical documents as crucial tools.
• It treats history not as mere “background” but as an essential part of interpretation.
• It understands literature as shaping not just historical moments but also its readers and listeners.
• It emphasizes uncovering how a text was formed and the cultural forces that influenced it.
• It argues that neither writers nor critics can be fully objective—everyone is shaped by social biases, cultural influences, and political agendas.

METHODOLOGY: HOW CULTURAL POETICS WORKS

📖 Cultural Poetics begins with the assumption that language both shapes and is shaped by the culture that uses it.

📖 It sees history and literature as nearly identical—both are narratives influenced by their time, their creators, and their readers.

📖 It rejects the idea of a single, objective historical truth. Instead, history itself is viewed as a narrative discourse—a conversation between the past and the present.

📖 Meaning is created through the interplay of different social discourses—there is no hierarchy, and every discourse must be considered.

📖 A text’s significance lies in the cultural system that includes its author, the text itself, and its readers. Ignoring any of these risks falling back into old-fashioned, rigid historicism.

📖 Cultural Poetics encourages us to seek alternative histories ("counter-histories")—perspectives that challenge dominant narratives and bring forward the voices that history often silences.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Cultural Poetics teaches us that literature and history are not just records of the past but living conversations. Every text, every historical event, and every interpretation carries many voices—our own, those of others, those of the past, and even those of the future.

Cultural Poetics scholars, regardless of their specific methodology, begin by assuming that language both shapes and is shaped by the culture that uses it. From this perspective, history and literature are almost synonymous, as both are narrative discourses that interact with their historical contexts, their authors, readers, and present-day cultures. Neither can claim a complete or objective understanding of its content or historical situation, as both are ongoing dialogues with their creators, readers, and cultures. History, in this sense, becomes a narrative discourse, and meaning evolves from the interaction of various social discourses. No discourse holds a hierarchical position; all are necessary and must be investigated in the process of textual analysis. A text’s meaning, as viewed through the lens of Cultural Poetics, resides within a cultural system composed of the interconnected discourses of the author, the text, and the reader.

To truly understand a text's significance and the complex social structure it is a part of, Cultural Poetics critics argue that all three areas—author, text, and reader—must be investigated. Ignoring any one of these risks reverting to old historicism, which fails to recognize the text as a social production. Scholars of Cultural Poetics assert that examining these elements uncovers the intricate relationships among various discourses, showing how narrative discourses like history, literature, and other social productions interact with, define, and are shaped by their cultural context. What we learn through these principles and methods is that there is not one singular voice interpreting texts and our culture, but many voices: our own, others', past voices, present voices, and future voices. This approach opens the door to "counter-histories" or alternative perspectives that are often silenced in traditional historical interpretations.

New Historicism	Cultural Materialism
Concentrates on those at the top of the social hierarchy.	Concentrates on those at the bottom of the social hierarchy
Focuses on the oppressive aspects of society that people have to overcome to achieve change.	Focuses on how that change is wrought
Uses only co-texts that would have been contemporary to the text in question.	Uses co-texts from the entire trajectory of a text’s history
Influenced by Foucault , whose 'discursive practices' are frequently a reinforcement of dominant ideology.	Raymond Williams, whose 'structures of feeling' contain the seeds from which grows resistance to the dominant ideology

What New Historicists Do:

i)   They juxtapose literary and non-literary texts, interpreting literary works through the lens of historical, social, and political contexts.

ii)  They aim to 'defamiliarize' canonical texts by detaching them from the weight of past scholarship, approaching them as if reading them for the first time.

iii) They focus on the role of State power, patriarchal structures, and colonization, exploring how these systems are maintained and reinforced within the text.

iv) They incorporate post-structuralist ideas, particularly Derrida's notion that all aspects of reality are textualized and Foucault’s theory of social structures shaped by dominant discursive practices.

What Cultural Materialist Critics Do:

i) They read literary texts—often Renaissance plays—in a way that recovers the histories of exploitation from which the texts emerged.

ii) They highlight the elements that caused these histories to be lost, such as the commodification of works like Shakespeare's through the heritage industry.

iii) They combine Marxist and feminist approaches to critique dominant ideologies, especially in Shakespeare criticism, in an effort to break from conservative cultural, political, and religious assumptions.

iv) They employ close textual analysis, often using structuralist and post-structuralist techniques, to challenge traditional methods of interpretation shaped by conservative frameworks.

v)  They primarily work within traditional canons, arguing that engaging with more obscure texts is less effective in political debates about national identity or the school curriculum.