How to Read Historically

New Historicism is a critical methodology that moves away from the intense formalism of the New Critics and the naive historicism of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Rather, new historicists conceive of literature as situated within the totality of the institutions, social practices, and the discourses that constitute the culture of a particular time and place, and with which the literary texts interacts as both a product and a producer of cultural energies and codes. Four theoretical assertions support new historicist practices: 

1. A literary text is not any more autonomous than other forms of writing. It is not, as the New Critics argued, autonomous but historically dependent.
2. Literature is therefore "embedded" in its contexts, both shaped by its context and helping to shape the larger culture.
3. The author is subject to his or her historical moment, although he or she too may intervene in this history.
4. The reader is subject to his or her historical moment, although, again, he or she too may intervene in this history. 

New Historicists are primarily interested in two aspects of study:

1. The way in which a text represents a given historical problem or institution. This representation might either be more literal or figurative. For instance, Brook Thomas's American Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract examines how the shifting status of contract, both in the realms of industrial labor and marriage, was represented in American realist novels. In contrast, Michael Szalay's New Deal Modernism reads modernist literature of the 1930s and 1940s in light of the development of the New Deal. While the texts that Szalay studies do not deal with the New Deal directly, he examines them for evidence of reproducing the cultural logic of the New Deal.
2. The way in which the means of production influence the production of a work of literature. For instance, Lawrence Rainey's Institutions of Modernism gives up the close examination of texts altogether in order to understand how the market for aesthetic goods influenced the production of The Waste Land, Ulysses, and other modernist milestones.  

All works of cultural production are shaped by the historical circumstances in which they are produced and received. If we fail to understand a text's context, we fail to understand the text in its entirety. Thus, when we read a work of literature, we must take into account the historical forces that guided its production and its reception. In order to do so we must take three things into account.

First, we ought to understand the historical realities that the work depicts. While many novels and plays tell stories set in their author's present, many do not. We ought then to consider why the author chose this time for his or her setting? Could it be set in another era without much substantive change? What historical forces within the work influence its characters, its themes? In considering the time depicted we should not scrutinize it for accuracy. We are not reading histories. All writers take poetic license with the facts and no historical novel/play is under a strict contract to tell their reader the historical Truth with a capital "T." The most any writer can do is tell his or her reader the history as he or she understands it. If the writer has taken major liberties with the historical record, its far more interesting to ask what the effects of these changes are in terms of plot, character development, or theme. Quibbling over inaccuracies does not lead to a better understanding of the the work.

Second, it's important to take into account the time of the novel's production. When did the author write the novel? Over how much time? Historical works  are often more about the time in which they appear than with the time they depict. Thus, William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is far more interested in his contemporary moment than with the trials and tribulations of Rome. With this in mind it's then important to ask how Shakespeare's views of the English monarchy influenced his depiction of Rome.

Third, we need to consider when the work was received. That is to say, we need to know when readers/audiences first got their hands on the text. While many works  are published soon after their completion, other works are published long after their author has completed them or after some delay. However, considering when a work is received need not only limit our discussion to its initial audience. After all, we all are readers and we are well aware that we continue to read the works of the past. Therefore, we can also ask how later generations of readers understood a text and why.

This entry adapts material from M. H. Abrams from A Glossary of Literary Terms.

Examples of Scholarly Abstracts from Excellent Students

McNamara, Robert. " 'Prufrock' and the Problem of Literary Narcissism." Contemporary Literature. 27:3 (1986): 356-357.

McNamara’s analysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” uses his thoughts on subjectivity and individualistic ‘abstract potentiality’ as a filter to look at Eliot’s poem. Subjectivity and abstract potentiality both refer to the individual’s ability to create fiction that they apply to an objective reality. In Prufrock’s case, this reality refers to the social reality that he is afraid to face. Prufrock, instead of interacting with other human beings – other subjective individuals – in order to become numb to this fear of misunderstanding and overcome it, instead chooses to protect himself from it. McNamara interprets Prufrock’s Hamlet-like paralysis and his own self-conscious prolonging and preservation of that paralysis as an act of self-love. He believes that Prufrock fears society because he cherishes his own subjectivity. He sees everything form a distorted, fictionalized point of view.McNamara does not believe that Prufrock is unreasonably sociopathic. He sees Prufrock as a logical individual who chooses to remain protected by his own unaltered perspective on the world. Though this puts him out of touch with reality, Prufrock consciously makes this decision. The process of this decision is apparent in the changing of the feminine image within this poem. McNamara believes that Prufrock comes to see the women that he interacts with as threatening individuals because they can hurt him with their misunderstandings and statements like “that is not what I meant, at all”. By the end of the poem, there are no more women – only mermaids who sing amongst themselves without attention to him. The “dare” that Prufrock refers to so often in the poem is not out of fear for disturbing the objective universe at all, but a fear of disturbing his own subjective universe. This narcissism leads him to imagine everything – such as the mermaids – and do nothing, so that he never truly interacts and thus is never truly in danger of being judged.

by Danny Zhang

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Neigh, Janet. “Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’s ‘Leda and the Swan’ in Journal of Modern Literature 29.4 (2006) 145-160

Janet Neigh’s essay, “Reading from the Drop: Poetics of Identification and Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”” uses feminist and post-colonial reading strategies to analyze W.B. Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan.” Neigh specifically examines identity and identification in the poem. First, Neigh examines how the final couplet as a question asks the reader to interpret the sonnet through means of identification. She points out that often times we are encouraged to identify with both the victim and the rapist and sort of experience how both their identities begin to blur into one because of this act. An example of this is the presence of sexual desire and consent in the “loosening thighs,” “breast upon breast” and “burning” that allows the reader to see from the rapist’s perspective as well as the victim’s. The depiction of the swan is becomes less and less masculine as the rape gets further and further along. This gender hybridity illustrates how during the rape not only do their identities begin to blur but their genders become harder to identify as simply male and female. After the rape, Leda is described as “being so caught up.” Neigh uses this to illustrate how entangled Leda’s identity is with Zeus’s identity even when there is some resistance. We see this finally when the swan drops Leda. The sonnet indicates that Leda does take something from Zeus even as she drops and even at her most dominated. This is an example of just how entangled their identities became even beyond simply oppressor and victim. When looked at in a post-colonial sense, it implies that Ireland’s identity cannot so easily be defined apart from its English colonizer.

by Warren Fong
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In his book, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and the Twentieth Century, Michael North argues that in order to fully understand the movements of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism, one must refer to the elements of each movement simultaneously because dialect, specifically black dialect, is the common bond between the two movements. North utilizes various events in literary history, such as the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and early events in the life of T.S. Eliot, to support his claims. North shows that the OED, in its attempts to standardize the language, actually aided the birth and rise to fame of the black dialect because many used the dialect in protest to the standardization of the English language. North also states that Modernist writer T.S. Eliot, in his early life utilized black dialect in literature he wrote, setting the stage for how one can relate Modernism to the Harlem Renaissance. North asserts that Modernist poets saw black diction as a tool to show the rebellion against traditional English, while the Harlem Renaissance served as an opportunity to break away from stereotypes which stated that black diction was despicable in literature. Although the two movements seem to be going in opposite directions, North writes that black diction is the driving force behind both; therefore both movements must be taken into consideration together.

by: Joshua Trejo

Transitions

Cause and Effect
1. accordingly
2. as a result
3. consequently
4. hence
5. it follows, then
6. since
7. therefore
8. thus

Conclusion
1. as a result
2. consequently
3. hence
4. in conclusion
5. in short
6. in sum, then
7. it follows, then
8. therefore
9. thus

Comparison
1. along the same lines
2. in the same way
3. likewise
4. similarly

Contrast
1. although
2. by contrast
3. conversely
4. despite
5. even though
6. nevertheless
7. nonetheless
8. on the contrary
9. on the other hand
10. regardless
11. whereas
12. however
13. in contrast
14. while
15. yet

Addition
1. also
2. besides
3. furthermore
4. moreover
5. indeed
6. in addition

Concession
1. admittedly
2. although it is true that
3. granted
4. I concede that
5. of course

Example
1. after all
2. as an illustration
3. consider
4. for example
5. for instance
6. specifically

They Say/I Say Templates

Below you will find a number of different ways to integrate the thoughts of others into your own writing. For further reference I recommend Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstien's They Say/I Say. What follows was developed from the second edition of that book.

Introducing "Standard Views"
1. Many today tend to believe that _____.
2. Conventional wisdom has it that _____.
3. The standard way of thinking about topic (x) has it that _____.
4. It is often said that _____.
5. Many people assume that _____.

Introducing Something Implied or Assumed
1. One implication of X's treatment of _____ is that _____.
2. Although X does not say so directly, she apparently assumes that _____.

Introducing an Ongoing Debate
1. In discussions of X, one controversial issue has  been _____.
2. On the one hand, _____ argues _____. On the other hand, _____ contends _____.
3. My own view is _____.

Capturing Authorial Action
1.  X acknowledges that _____.
2. X agrees that _____.
3. X believes that _____.
4. X claims that _____.
5. X demonstrates that _____.
6. X insists that _____.
7. X reminds us that _____.

Introducing Quotations
1. X states, "_____" (#).
2. According to X, "_____" (#).
3. In her book, _____, X maintains that "_____" (#).
4. X agrees/disagrees when she writes, "_____" (#).
5. X complicates matters further when he writes, "_____" (#).

Disagreeing, With Reasons
1. I think X is mistaken because she overlooks _____.
2. X's claim that _____ rests upon the questionable assumption that _____.
3. By focusing on _____, X overlooks the deeper problem of _____.

Agreeing and Disagreeing Simultaneously
1. Though I concede that _____, I still insist that _____.
2. Although I agree with X up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that _____.
3. While X is probably wrong when she claims that _____, she is right that _____.

Proofreading and Editing Advice

Below I've outlined some generally good advice for proof reading and editing your papers. These are techniques that I use and have found useful. Integrate them into your own writing process.

1. Give yourself time. If you finish your paper at 1:00 am the day it is due, your mind will be Swiss cheese and you will not be able to look at your work critically. If a rooster is crowing somewhere in the United States, you have not given yourself enough time.

2. Really, give yourself time. Greatness does not come from burning the midnight oil. Grammar and punctuation mistakes, leaps in logic, and lowered grades do.

3. Give yourself a day in-between completing your paper and looking it over. When you proofread your paper just after you've completed it, you lack the critical distance necessary to really look over your paper. Your words will make sense to you because your ideas are fresh in your head and are still a part of your thinking process. Other people, however, are not privy to your intimate thoughts.

4. Read your paper aloud, preferably to a friend (you can buy them coffee later). Reading your work aloud will make re-reading your paper a fuller experience. You will read slower and your ear will help you pick up mistakes your eye will miss.

5. Have someone else look it over for you (again coffee). A fresh pair of eyes will do wonders.

6. Read your paper backwards. Backwards paper your read? No, not like that. Start at the end of your paper and then work your way back paragraph by paragraph. Often times, we start strong and end weak when we write. Proofreading backwards allows you to follow your progress and make improvements. It is also a good tactic to take after you've gone through your first and second read through and find yourself skimming the first part of the essay or getting tired by th end of it.

7. Compose a reverse outline. Not sure if your paper makes sense? Make a reverse outline of your paper, highlighting your main points. You might find that you are missing a step in your thinking.

How to Write a Successful Paper

Guidelines for a Successful Paper:

A helpful metaphor for paper writing is that your argument is like a building, so make sure that every piece of evidence (quotations from the text and the analysis of those quotations) that you use as a brick in your building fits well and is strong. Make sure that you cement your evidence into your argument through the use of strong topic sentences that reflect the main point of the paragraph and concluding sentences that tie each paragraph back to your thesis.

Textual Evidence: Any good literary analysis must use many specific details to support the conclusions that it reaches. Make sure your own claims about the text are supported with specific quotations from the text. In addition, remember to explain as completely as possible the significance of the quotations you choose to cite. How does a particular quotation relate to your larger argument about the text? Quotations should always be accompanied by detailed analysis. Close reading is a crucial part of this essay; you must explain how specific elements within the material you quote help to establish that which you claim the quotation establishes. Remember to connect the steps in your thinking for your readers – the connections obvious in your mind usually aren’t obvious to us, and we want to understand the point you’re making. Quote selectively; cite only those passages that support your argument most effectively. Try to avoid using too many long quotations (over three lines); try to say more about less. One recipe for a good paragraph is something called the Paraburger:

State the argument of the paragraph (TOP BREAD)
Quote the text that you will use to make your point (SPECIAL SAUCE)
Analyze the significance of the quoted text to make your case, requoting where necessary (MEAT/VEGGIE PATTY)
Tie the point of your paragraph back to the main thesis of your paper (BOTTOM BREAD).

Arguable Thesis and Organization: Be sure to include a thesis stating your main claims about the text(s) near the beginning of your paper. Think of your thesis as a promise to the reader concerning the points you will make in the rest of the paper. Your thesis should focus and organize your essay; every paragraph you write should develop your thesis in some way. Tie every paragraph back to your thesis, thereby reinforcing the role the paragraph plays in your larger argument. Make an outline before you write to help you connect your thesis to the supporting paragraphs. Also, try making a paragraph from your thesis statement and all your topic sentences – if that paragraph is coherent, then you’re topic sentences (and hopefully also your paragraphs!) are on track. Try to conclude your argument with comments that do not simply repeat what you’ve already said, but point the reader to other connected ideas or issues.

Avoid Generalizations: Take the time to define key terms in your analysis in your own language. Always “earn your terms”—don’t just repeat expressions or phrases from lecture, but make sure that you define what you mean by key images or ideas. For example, if you cite a term from Brook Thomas, you still need to explain how exactly this term fits into the context of your particular argument (what do you mean by "civil rights"?). Try to build a convincing case for your interpretation of the text using specific logic and evidence. Focus on specific word choices and phrases in your analysis.

How to Write a Strong Thesis

1st story: Describes a topic; gives the facts; makes an observation. This level of thesis makes observations that are non-controversial (i. e. no reasonable person would disagree with them). A person reading such a thesis immediately thinks: "Yes, this is true."

2nd story: interprets, gives a point of view on, and/or adds controversy to the facts of the first story. By adding controversy, I mean it takes a position on the facts which is not obvious, a position which reasonable person could disagree with. A person reading a 2-story thesis thinks: "That's an interesting point of view; now prove it to me." By controversial, I do not mean this thesis has to be absurd or idiosyncratic; you'll never be able to convince your reader of that kind of argument. Rather, I mean it takes one position out of a number of positions.

3rd story: relates the 2-story thesis to the bigger picture, explains its significance, sets it a new context. This is the most difficult type of thesis to describe (and write) because it can take so many forms. I find it helpful to think of this story "opening out" - as if though a skylight - to a wider view. It is the answer you get when you ask of a 2-story thesis, "so what?" The reader should say: "I see why this argument matters." The pitfall in this type of thesis, that you want to be careful to avoid, is that it can get too ambitious, and try to make a bigger claim that you're able to substantiate (e.g. "My analysis of Sonnet 18 shows that all Western poetry is morally bankrupt and self-serving."

Examples

1st story: James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time  makes extensive references to his childhood Jewish friends and the Holocaust.

2nd story:  James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time  makes extensive references to his childhood Jewish friends and the Holocaust as a means of illustrating to his audience the perils that African-Americans face merely by living in the United States. 

3rd story: James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time makes extensive references to his childhood Jewish friends and the Holocaust as a means of illustrating to his audience the perils that African-Americans face merely by living in the United States. Baldwin's focus on the Holocaust is important because it marks a dramatic shift in the way that African-American rhetoricians made use of the figure of the "Jews." Previously, African-Americans had relied on the figure of the "Jews" in order to inspire, as they too had fled slavery; however, Baldwin's new emphasis on the Holocaust marks a more negative appraisal of the possibilities for blacks living in the United States. [With apologies to Eric Sundquist]

As you can see, each story depends on the one below it. It is difficult, to say the least, to build a three-story house without a first story. The same holds true with a thesis: a two-story thesis needs a first story, and a three-story thesis needs a first and second story.

How to Close Read & Why

History:
Close reading is a critical way of interpreting literature that was developed in the first half of the twentieth century by a group of scholars and intellectuals known as the New Critics. The movement found success in the American University system because it both professionalized criticism while simultaneously making refined literature more accessible to a generation of students who had come to college with a diverse set of cultural backgrounds. While the theoretical and critical insights of the New Criticism have not been “new” for some time, the methodology of close reading that they pioneered still remains an important technique within literary studies and a key component in classroom instruction.

The New Criticism derived in considerable in part from the British scholars I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis as well as from the essays of T. S. Eliot. However, the movement developed principally in the United States by critics such as Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, John Crowe Ransom (who coined the term), and William K. Wimsatt. Of particular importance are the critics Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (also a renowned novelist) who developed a series of New Critical textbooks that were widely adopted throughout the United States: Understanding Poetry (1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), and Understanding Drama (1945). These critics developed the New Criticism in response to the prevailing interests of scholars, critics, and professors who were particularly interested in the mind of the author or his biography, or in the social context of literature. Instead, the New Critics argued that the focus of literature ought to be the text itself and its literary qualities.

As such, W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley established two New Critical “heresies” that would focus readers on the text itself. The first of these, the Intentional Fallacy, declared that it was fallacious to be interested in what the author intended to say. Since the New Critics held that literature was autonomous and self-sufficient, what was in the author’s mind did not matter. Furthermore, it was for all intents and purposes unknowable. What mattered were the words on the page. The second of these heresies, the Affective Fallacy, addressed the problem from the other end, the reader. Just as they ignored the intention of the author, they ignored the feeling of the reader. How literature might affectively move a reader did not matter because an interest in this got one away from the text. Thus, when you are constructing your own close readings, you should leave your own affective responses out of your explication of the text.

How to Close Read
According to M. H. Abrams, a prominent New Critic himself, the principles of the New Criticism are basically verbal. Literature is a special kind of language whose attributes are defined by systemic opposition to the language of science and of practical logical discourse, and the explication procedure is to analyze the meanings and interactions of words, figures of speech, and symbols. The emphasis is on the “organic unity,” in a successful literary work, of its overall structure with its verbal meanings, and we are warned against separating content from form by what Cleanth Brooks called “the heresy of the paraphrase.” New Criticism is therefore a formalist school of criticism and close reading is a formalist activity. Close reading requires you to pay close attention to form, or the way in which literature communicates information. When performing a close reading, you should consider the following:

Structure

• In what genre is the passage written? Is it heavily or lightly marked by genre?
• How does the passage fit in with the overall genre of the work in which it occurs? (E.g., is it a humorous passage in a comedy, or a moment of comic relief in a tragedy?)
• Does the passage consist of narration, description, analysis, or discourse?
• Is discourse direct, indirect, or free indirect? Are there significant repetitions or redundancies? Does one part of the passage contradict or modify another? Are there significant omissions? Does the passage move quickly or slowly, briefly or at length? 

Diction

• Connotation: why these specific words? (e.g., father, dad, daddy, pa, sire)
• Polysemy: do the words have other meanings or homonyms?
• What parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) predominate?
• Are the words:
• Common or unusual?
• simple or complex?
• long or short?
• concrete or abstract?
• particular or general?
• archaic or current?
• context-dependent or context-independent? 

Syntax and Sentence Structure

• Do any sentences or clauses have an unusual word order ("California is where I went")? (The basic word order in English is subject-verb-object.)
• Does the word order make us wiat for information or provide it earlier?
• Does it call particular attention to one part of the sentence? 
• Does it cause an initial mistkae or ambiguity that it later clears up?

Verbs

• Tense: past, present, future?
• Aspect: neutral, progressive, perfect, progressive perfect?
• Mood: indicative, imperfect, conditional, subjunctive
• Valency: intransitive, transitive?
• Voice: active, passive?

Person and Number

• Are subjects first-, second-, or third-person? Singular or plural?
• Are objects singular or plural?

Tropes

• What figures of speech are used?
• Does the logic of the passage rely mainly on metaphor or metonymy?
• Are comparisons made through metaphor or simile? 

Close Reading in Action
In How to Read Literature (2013), Terry Eagleton, by no means a New Critic, nonetheless demonstrates the power of close reading to make critical observations about literature. Eagleton turns to the opening passage of George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) in order to demonstrate close reading. Orwell’s novel begins like this:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

Eagleton then goes on to interpret the passage by paying close attention to the words used in the passage and noting their arrangement. In two paragraphs he demonstrates how a close reading can be done on just two sentences:

The first sentence gains its effect from carefully dropping the word “thirteen” into an otherwise unremarkable piece of description, thus signaling that the scene is set either in some unfamiliar civilization or in the future. Some things haven’t changed (the month is still named April, and winds can still be bitter), but others have, and part of the effect of the sentence springs from this juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unfamiliar. Most readers who open Orwell’s novel will know already that it is set in the future, though in the author’s future rather than our own…

This is a dystopian novel (dystopia being the opposite of utopia) about an all-powerful state that can manipulate everything from the historical past to its citizens’ habits of mind. No doubt it is this state that gave Victory Mansions its triumphalistic name. Yet it may be that the second sentence of the passage offers a mild degree of hope in this dismal situation. As Winston Smith enters the Mansions, a swirl of gritty dust manages to infiltrate the building along with him; and though the novel itself seems to find some ominous meaning in this intrusion (the wind is “vile”)… this gust of grist [may be] rather less sinister. Dust and grit are signs of the random and accidental. They represent bits of stuff without rhyme or reason, which fail to add up to any total or meaningful design. One might therefore see them as the opposite of the totalitarian regime portrayed by the novel. In the same way, the wind might be seen as a force that defies human regulation. It blows as it will, now this way and now the other. There is no rhyme or reason to it, either. The state, it would appear, has at least not been able to harness Nature to its purposes. And totalitarian states are uneasy with anything they cannot dragoon into order and intelligibility. Perhaps the regime cannot entirely banish chance, rather as Victory Mansions cannot entirely keep out the dust. (42-43)

Thus, by paying attention to the first two sentences of 1984, Eagleton provides some insight into Orwell’s novel. There is, despite the omnipresence of Big Brother, and undercurrent of hope and it is revealed even in these first two sentences.

Why Do This?
The benefits to close reading are vast. They allow for a thorough interrogation of the text and its language. Knowing how to close read will not only help you with basic reading comprehension, but it will allow you a greater understanding of it; with close reading you will be able to penetrate beyond the surface meaning of any text. Knowing how to close read in your day to day life will allow you to see past the everyday meanings of the texts you encounter and to gain a fuller understanding of the world around you. That being said, while we will work on our close reading throughout the quarter, we will not hold consider it a sacrosanct methodology. As the quarter progresses we will discuss how we can read historically while still paying close attention to the language of the text.

This material was developed after consulting M. H. Abrhams’s Glossary of Literary Terms and Gerald Graff’s Professing Literature.