Literature: Glance Back To The History

The relationship between "literature" and "history" experienced the "Historicism" in 19 century and "anti-Historicism" at the beginning of 20 century. Nowadays, literary study glanced back to its history during 1970s and 1980s and made the New Historicism one of the highly anticipated hot points in the contemporary research of literary theory. For the present, the researchers concentrate on the translations, introductions and inquiries of some relevant phenomena of New Historicism, and the research method is stationary and individual. Though some studies are comparatively detailed and thorough, there is no profound research of some core problems. This thesis proposes to make some comparison of the New Historicism by putting it on the axes of ordinate and abscissa of the western literary theory. Then we can verify the position of New Historicism in research objects, research methods and the practices of literary criticism, and obtain the comprehension and sublimation of its significance and value to the construction of Chinese literary theory.The thesis falls into four parts.From Part One to Part Three, I focus on the theory itself and try to find the "new" of New Historicism by analyzing its research objects, research methods, and practices of literary criticism. The fourth part extends the literary study by considering the New Historicism together with some hot points of contemporary literature research, and tries to find out and make use of its strong point.Part One: the "new" research object of New Historicism.Literature's research object is the key to the cognition of different schools of literary criticism. This part grasps the object of New Historicism from three aspects. Firstly, "What is history?": New Historicism and HistoricismIn the eyes of Historicism, "History" is continuous, integrated, and can be returned to the original condition, which is inexplicable and unchangeable. On the contrary, "Literature" is an uncertain text which needs to be demonstrated. Therefore, "Literature" is a "mirror" which reflects the history. The key task of critics is to find out the historical facts in the literary text. Then the New Historicists claim "History" is various, ambulatory and can be diversified in explanation. The task of critics is to reform the "context" when the text produced, and dialogue with the past. On all accounts, "Literature" is not only a knowledge that runs neck and neck with "History", but also has its own dynamic force on history. Thus "Literature" and "History" is in the state of "Intertextuality". The different historical perspectives of New Historicism and Historicism made the New Historicism reconsider the relationship between "history" and "literature", which led to the formation of a new literary object of criticism that is different from Historicism.Secondly, The return of literary research: New Historicism and Literary Theory of 20 Century.The New Historicism's reconsideration of "history" made its research object different from the other non-history criticism of the 20th century that focus on text. At the same time, it is the "history" return after the non-history stage, therefore, its understanding of history and literature is also different from that of the Historicism, e.g. Marxism.Thirdly, The reason for the formation of New Historicism's literary object.This part tells the reasons for the differences between the New Historicism's literary object and that of the Historicism and other contemporary schools by discussing the influences of "the transforming of Western Historical Philosophy", "the development of Rhetoric" and "contemporary culture current of thought".Part Two : The New Critical Method of New Historicism.The second core problem in understanding New Historicism is the thorough analysis of its special critical method. This part tries to grasp its peculiarities in critical methods by analyzing it from five aspects: "distinct Subjectivity", "Ideological quality of critical practice", "compatible and flexible thinking model", "multipl...