I feel like I need to begin my methodological introduction with graffiti. Graffiti that says: "Bercovitch Bites," or "Foster Rules," or even "Stop Elitist Historicists." Nothing particularly original -- just a few key phrases that capture the frustration I have felt while researching New Historicism and more particularly, its application to texts. Somehow, graffiti -- the unscholarly domain of angry teenagers armed with cans of spray paint -- echoes my reaction to the scholars in this field who seem to be writing only for other scholars, thus excluding those of us who, fascinated with the ideas expressed, would like to learn about the method and topic by simply picking up a book or article. As I understand it, the whole idea of New Historicist criticism is to enlighten the readers of a text further about that text. Enlighten, educate, teach or inform -- however you put it -- this kind of criticism should be inclusive, not exclusive. The heavy use of jargon and obscure references by these critics serves as a "locked gate" that only allows those with the proper credentials a "key" to get in.
Within the context of the text I have chosen (A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, by Nancy Prince) this elitist approach seems incongruous simply because of the facts surrounding its author and publication. This is a text written by a primarily self-educated woman who felt very strongly about using her knowledge and abilities in a "hands-on" manner to help and "enlighten" others. Ultimately, she wrote about her experiences to put food on her table, not to impress her colleagues. In any case, for the purposes of this paper, I will attempt to explain what I think New Historicism is and how I intend to use the theories beh...
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...iticism. Online. 5 April, 1998. Available: http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/entries/new_historicism.html
Cogan, Frances. All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth Century America. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.
Epstein, Leslie. The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1981.
Howe, Daniel. "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System." The Journal of American History 77 (March 1991): 1216-1239.
Newton, Judith. "History as Usual? Feminism and the 'New Historicism.'" The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram Veeser. New York: Routledge, 1989. 152.
Prince, Nancy. A Black Woman's Odyssey through Russia and Jamaica: The Narrative of Nancy Prince. New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, 1990.
James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950. Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War, American Women in the Nineteenth Century: Hill and Wang, New York 1986
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
The Democratization of American Christianity, by Nathan Hatch, is written about “the cultural and religious history of the early American republic and the enduring structures of American Christianity” (3). Hatch writes to make two arguments: 1) the theme of democratization is central to understanding the development of American Christianity, and 2) the years of the early republic are the most crucial in revealing to process that took and is still taking place. The story of the democratization of American Christianity begins with the population boom in America from the Revolution up to 1845. Hatch writes that during this boom, “American Christianity became a mass enterprise” (4).
Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood." The Many-Faceted Jacksonian Era: New Interpretations. Contributions in American History, number 67, Edward Pessen, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.
In The Houses of History, many different schools of historical thought are presented and light in shed on what exactly it means to be those different types of historians. Not all historians think the same way or approach history from the same perspective, but some similar groups of thought have converged together and have formed the various types of historians that will be presented, such as empiricists, psychohistorians, oral historians, and gender historians. All of these groups can approach the same event or concept and look at them in an entirely different way simply due to the way the historical approach they are accustomed to views things.
...y uses anecdotes and stories of women in the 17th and 18th centuries to provide evidence to the reader and demonstrate the roles women filled and how they filled those roles. Furthermore, she illustrates the individuality in each woman’s story. Although in several of the stories the women may be filling the same roles, the uniqueness of the situation varies from woman to woman. Ulrich’s use of period stories helps add to the credibility of the arguments she makes. She makes the reader feel the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of colonial New England women. A sense of appreciation is gained by the reader for the sheer number of roles fulfilled by the women of New England. In addition, Ulrich’s real life accounts also give valuable insight to life as it was during this time period in American history and the silent heroes behind it – the wives of New England.
Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Moran, Mickey. “1930s, America- Feminist Void?” Loyno. Department of History, 1988. Web. 11 May. 2014.
Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so.
Parpart, Jane and Marchand M. (1995) “Part one: Exploding the canon: an Introduction/Conclusion”, in Marchand, Marianne and Parpart, Jane (eds) Feminism Postmodernism Devlopment, London; New York: Routledge: 1-23.
Gorham, Deborah. A. A. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Martineau, Harriet.
Ever since poststructuralism led us to deconstruct history's “myth of objectivity,” it is widely accepted that there is no such thing as one true history (White 52). Instead, scholars across all disciplines have embraced the term historical narrative to express critical distance to claims made by official historiography. The term coined by historian Hayden White redefines history as a set of such historical narratives: “verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found” (82). It concedes that any historical representation is fabricated and always depends on the historian's perspective, their available data and, most importantly, discursive powers1 that shape history to suit dominant elites while repressing other voices (269). From this awareness a growing sensibility for the importance of critically confronting historical narratives has emerged, including doing so in and through literature.