The Economimesis of New Historicism (Or How New Historicism Displaced Theory in English Literature Departments)

Abstract

The form of historicism that has had most impact in the context of literary theory in the Anglophone academy is new historicism. The label new historicism was applied to an initially American mode of literary study that emerged in the late 1970s in the context of “heated discussions” surrounding theorised forms of literary study like Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, post‐structuralism and deconstruction. Having emerged in this context, however, new historicism — and the more broader forms of historicist study that have migrated across a variety of disciplines in the arts and humanities — has thrived in the Academy while interest in “theory” has declined since the 1990s. In this article I propose to look closely at the reasons for the survival and success of new historicism, even as other, more radical modes of analysis have become unfashionable.