On The View Of Literary History Within The New Historicism

Abstract The literary criticism of New Historicism, one of the most important literary criticism school of 20th century, is different from the traditional historicism and formalism. The critical method has profoundly influenced on the discussion of literary history rewriting and creating of New Historicism novels. The thesis will be helpful to study and compile the 21st century Chinese literary history by interpreting the view of literary history within the New Historicism.This thesis consists of three parts. The first part mainly explains the viewpoint of new historicism on history, basing on the history view of Michel Foucault, metahistory theory of Hayden White and the theory of Louis A. Montrose: the historicity of texts and the textuality of histories. It argues that history is not an objective being but a"historical narrative"or"historiography". Thus history is not only a reappearance of historical events but also an imaginary construction, which derives from some thoughts of historical reality. The most important change is the emergence of the textuality of history. History changes from"unique story"to"one story", namely the"History"is replaced by"histories".The second part focuses on the view of literary history within the New Historicism, in which the relationship of history and literature totally changed. Literature does not reflect the historical reality any more. History is not the background of literature, either. Literature becomes the union of history and ideology, having a relation of interaction. New Historicism stresses the ideology of literary history, which means a multi-function of literature to ideology: there are consolidation, subversion and containment to subversion. The multi-function shows that, on the one hand, literature is created by the network of social power, which demands people to abide by the decrees and contend with current situation; on the other hand, literature often challenges even subverts the hegemony of traditional ideology in some obscure ways.