1. Who is Stomping on Whom?
Catherine Wishart
Adjunct Instructor
Historical Perspective to Literary
Analysis
2. The Importance of the Historical
Perspective
Historical novels often make important comments
on the human condition in a particular era.
Understanding the human condition and social
pressures helps understand the work
How can we understand Uncle Tom’s Cabin by
Harriet Beecher Stowe without background
knowledge about slavery?
How can we understand The Jungle by Upton
Sinclair without understanding the treatment of
immigrants in the early 20th century? The conditions
in meat packing plants then?
(Guerin et al 52).
3. The Concept of Historical
Perspective
Traditional historical perspective asserts that
there “are ‘facts’ that we can know, with some
degree of certainty, and as readers we… need to
gather them…, and fit them together…, and
cautiously relate them to literary works” (Lynn
145).
“A historical reading of a literary work begins by
exploring the possible ways in which the meaning
of the text has changed over time” (Kennedy
1474).
4. Historical Criticism
Goals
• To strive to understand a
literary text as a product of the
social, cultural, and intellectual
context in which it was created.
• To examine how the text was
initially received by readers as
well as how its reception has
changed over time.
• To examine how the author’s
own experiences may be
reflected in the text.
5. Two Ways to Approach
Literature from a Historical
Perspective – Divergence of
Thought
Old Historicism looks at the time in which a
piece was written to determine how it was
interpreted by its contemporaries.
New Historicism demonstrates how a literary
work reflects ideas and attitudes of the time in
which it was written.
(DiYanni 1565).
6. Why Examine the Time Period in
Which a Piece Was Written?
Every literary work is written in a specific time
Time periods change how people think
Time periods change views of the world
Every time period has specific social values
Social values influence how a piece is written
Social values influence intellectual beliefs
Example: Shakespeare
Shakespeare wrote in a tumultuous time when some in
power believed the theater to be an evil influence
Did he write “all the world’s a stage” to comment on these
attacks?
Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slauterhouse Five during the Viet
Nam War Era
7. Why Demonstrate How a Work
Reflects its Time?
Many literary works comment on power struggles that
are occurring during the time in which they were
written
Examining other texts of the same time period, such as
diaries, records, and institutions helps understand the
literary work better
Language influences how we interpret text (the diction
of a piece)
Comparing and contrasting “the language of
contemporaneous documents and literary works”
reveals “hidden assumptions, biases, and cultural
attitudes that relate to the two kinds of texts…
8. A Checklist of Historical and New
Historicist Critical Questions
1. When was the work written? When was it published? How was it
received by the critics and public? Why?
2. What does the work’s reception reveal about the standards of taste
and value during the time period it was published and reviewed?
3. What social attitudes and cultural practices related to the action of the
work were prevalent during the time the work was written and
published?
4. What kinds of power relations does the work describe, reflect,
embody?
5. How do the power relations reflected in the literary work manifest
themselves in the cultural practices and social institutions prevalent
during the timer the work was written and published?
6. What other types of historical documents, cultural artifacts, or social
institutions might be analyzed in conjunction with particular literary
works? How might close reading of such nonliterary “text” illuminate
those literary works?
9. Works Cited
DiYanni, Robert. Literature Approaches to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Boston: McGraw
Hill, 2008.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Labor, Earle, Morgan, Lee,
Reesman, Jeanne C., Willingham, John R. A
Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature.
5th ed. NY: Oxford U P, 2005. Print.
