New Historicist Perspective

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
New Historicist Perspective

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Homework Questions:
168:

169:

170:

171:

Explain: "The new historicists . . . blur the distinctions, not only between history and other social sciences but also between background and foreground, historical and literary materials, political and poetical events" (171).

172:

Who is Michel Foucault?
Who is Friedrich Nietzsche?
Explain: "No historical event . . . has a single cause; rather, it is intricately connected with a vast web of economic, social, and political factors" (172).

174:

175:

Explain: "Like a work of art, a work of history is the negotiated product of a private creator and the public practices of a given society" (175).
Explain: "Any one change is connected with a host of others, no one of which may simply be identified as cause or effect, progressive or regressive, repressive or enabling" (175).

176:

Why shouldn't Foucault be considered the central influence on the new historicism?

177:

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What procedures, according to Jerome McGann, must the new historicist follow?
What key assumptions, according to H. Aram Veeser, do most new historicist critics incorporate?

Other Discussion Questions:
168:

172:

Explain: "It is difficult . . . to see present cultural practices critically from within them, and because of the same cultural practices, it is extremely difficult to enter bygone ages" (172).
Explain: "Not even a tyrannical aristocrat simply yields power, for the aristocrat is himself formed and empowered by a network of discourses and practices that constitute power" (172).

175:

177:

179:

What similarities and differences exist between Modiano's and McGann's readings of the "Rime" ?

181:

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