New Historicism as an Approach to the Study of Literature: From Stephen Greenblatt Until Today

Abstract

Many literary theorists and historians of our time are increasingly exploring the historical circumstances under which literary works were created. Historicism in literary science is not only about the restoration of an earlier state of society, but rather an entirely new literary practice that involves linking literary and non-literary texts in one continuity. It is impossible to accept that literary works exist in a aesthetic vacuum that has nothing to do with the historical context in which they arose. So literary works are not an autonomous aesthetic sphere, neither do literary works exist separately from other forms of cultural creativity of a historical period. Literature not only adapts to the history and draws inspiration from it, but even adjusts it to itself because literary works can sway the facts, spread the ideology of various colors, oppose to the policies and ideals in a direct or indirect way. There is no unhistorical literary work. If nothing else, it has found, chronologically speaking, his place in history, so it is no surprise that Zdenko Lesic is satisfied by the fact that contemporary interpreters of literature failed to banish the “demons of chronology” when they tried to approach their target literature as a purely artistic category.