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• Historical Criticism


  Involves looking beyond the literature at the broader historical and cultural events occurring during the time the piece was written
• History can influence literature, and literature can influence history
• Maya Angelou


  American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression
• Maya Angelou's first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), gained critical acclaim and a National Book Award nomination
• Maya Angelou's best known poem is perhaps On the Pulse of Morning, which she composed and delivered for the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in 1993
• New Historicism Theory


  Involves analyzing a given text in the context of its historical background, including considering the political, social, and economic conditions of the time the writer lived in
• New Historicism Literary Theory


  Involves analyzing a given text in the context of its historical background, including considering the political, social, and economic conditions of the time the writer lived in. The theory also considers the societal background of the critic or individual evaluating a text using New Historicism.
• New Historicism


  • Promotes distinction when studying a text
  • Sees history as inextricably linked to analyzing literature
  • Encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to literary studies, bringing in the fields of history, sociology, and cultural studies
• Principles of New Historicism


  • History is central
  • All historical factors must be considered
  • The critic's historical conditions are relevant
  • Power is a key consideration
  • Nuance is key, and history is ever-changing
• Stephen Greenblatt


  Founder of the New Historicism, his definitions of New Historicism were foundational to the theory
• Harold Aram Veeser


  American university professor and literary theorist, known for his contributions to both New Historicism and Postcolonial theory
• New Historicism is a literary theory that involves analyzing a text within its historical context
• The theory was first written about by theorist Stephen Greenblatt in the 1980s
• New Historicism prioritizes making history central to any literary analysis and always acknowledging distinction
• New Historicist critics are also aware of their own biases and prejudices that are influenced by the time period they live in
• Reader Response Criticism


  An approach to literary criticism and analysis that focuses on how readers are actively engaged in the creation of meaning in a text
• Reader Response Criticism


  The key idea is that readers create meaning rather than find it in a text. Works of literature are always incomplete without a reader to put in their half of the work to create meaning.
• Reader Response Criticism


  Focuses on the reader's psychological experience of reading a text, and how the reader creates meaning from what the text has given them as they read
• While Reader Response Criticism sees readers as creating their own, unique meanings, interpretations always need to have textual support
• Reader Response Criticism emerged in Germany and the United States in the late 1960s as a challenge to New Criticism
• New Criticism


  A school of thought that proposed all meaning was contained within a text's form, structure and content, and external factors played no role in a text's meaning
• Implied Reader


  The reader the author has in mind when they are writing the text, who they expect to react to, pick up on, interpret and experience aspects of the text in a certain way
• Resisting Reader


  A reader who refuses to fulfill the role of the implied reader - who refuses to read the text how it was "supposed to be read"
• Hans Robert Jauss


  A reader response theorist who considered how society and time period influence readers' interpretations of texts
• Wolfgang Iser

  A reader response theorist who came up with the concept of the 'implied reader' and placed importance on the reading experience. Work alongside with Hans Jauss
• Louise Rosenblatt


  A highly influential reader response critic who saw reading as a transaction between reader and text
• Stanley E. Fish


  A reader response theorist interested in how the interpretive community to which a reader belongs influences the meanings they garner from a text
• Interpretive Community


  A way of grouping readers that share historical and cultural contexts, which shapes the way they read and interpret texts
• Norman Holland


  A reader response theorist who focuses on how readers' 'identity themes' impact their readings of texts
• David Bleich


  A reader response theorist who argued that reader responses are the text, and that there is no text beyond the meanings that the readers come up with
• New Criticism is a school of thought that proposed all meaning was contained within a text's form, structure and content. External factors, such as context and the author's identity and authority played no role in a text's meaning. In this sense, texts have objective meanings.
• Judith Fetterley found the concept of the implied reader problematic and came up with the concept of a 'resisting reader'
• Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997)

  The work of Hans Robert Jauss takes a reader response approach that considers how society and time period influence readers' interpretations of texts. Based on the culture and time period the reader belongs to, they will have a certain kind of 'horizon of expectations'.
• David Bleich puts forward a radical reader response theory, known as Subjective Reader Response Criticism. Bleich argued that reader responses are the text.