Jonathan Milburn's Public Library

05 Jan 10

JSTOR: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 3-13

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new historicism terry eagleton

WRITING RESEARCH ESSAYS

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research

your topic is likely to be too
broad
Narrow your topic
3 more annotations...
- aspects of the topic that are controversial or need investigation
- only one research question
- You start with a topic like:
  "The history of
  industrial development in Korea." You choose one aspect and narrow your
  topic to "The history of the automobile industry in Korea
  during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s." Then you develop a
  research question: "Did the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s
  bring harm or did it bring benefit to the automobile
  industry in Korea?"

03 Jan 10

Introduction to Stephen Greenblatt, Module on History

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new historicism greenblatt

Towards a Poetics of Culture,
"practice" rather
than a "doctrine":
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- On the other hand, Greenblatt questions Jean-François Lyotard's
  tendency to associate capitalism with the effort to impose a single
  language onto all experience, thus destroying all differences between
  people or cultural spheres as well as all differences between aesthetics
  and politics. Greenblatt argues that both Jameson and Lyotard employ
  "history" in an effort to support one theoretical viewpoint
  that in turn leads to their monolithic and contradictory versions of
  capitalism:
- Lyotard, seeking to celebrate the differentiation of all discourses
  and to expose the fallaciousness of monological unity, finds capitalism
  at the root of the false integration. History functions in both cases
  as a convenient anecdotal ornament upon a theoretical structure, and
  capitalism appears not as a complex social and economic development
  in the West but as a malign philosophical principle. (5).
- New Historicism, by contrast, works
  to remain always attuned to the contradictions of any historical moment,
  including those moments dominated by capitalism.
- the effortless invocation of two
  apparently contradictory accounts of art is characteristic of American
  capitalism in the late twentieth century and an outcome of long-term
  tendencies in the relationship of art and capital;
- "I am suggesting
  that the oscillation between totalization and difference, uniformity
  and the diversity of names, unitary truth and a proliferation of distinct
  entities—in short, between Lyotard's capitalism and Jameson's—is
  built into the poetics of everyday behavior in America"
- a number of basic premises: 1) one should begin with specific details,
  anecdotes, and examples in order to avoid a totalizing version of history;
- 2) one should proceed from such details to illustrate how they are tied
  up with larger contradictory forces in a given time period, no matter
  how apparently innocuous the detail may seem at first; 3) one should
  remain self-conscious about one's methodologies, thus resisting "a
  historicism based upon faith in the transparency of signs and interpretative
  procedures" (12);
  4) one should be suspicious of liberatory narratives: everything is,
  on some level, caught up in the circulations of power in a given time
  period; and 5) all cultural products, whether they are high art, political
  documents, personal letters, or trash, are a part of larger discursive
  structures and, so, can offer clues to the ideological contradictions
  of a given time period.

Introduction to New Historicism

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new historicism greenblatt

General Introduction to New Historicism

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new historicism

interested
in recovering lost histories and in exploring mechanisms of repression
and subjugation.
New Historicists tend to
concentrate on those at the top of the social hierarchy
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- New Historicists tend to draw on the disciplines
  of political science and anthropology given their interest in governments,
  institutions, and culture, while Cultural Materialists tend to rely on
  economics and sociology given their interest in class, economics, and
  commodification.
- circulation, negotiation, profit and exchange
  , i.e. how activities that purport to be above the market (including literature)
  are in fact informed by the values of that market.
- New Historicists
  take this position further by then claiming that all cultural activities
  may be considered as equally important texts for historical analysis:
  contemporary trials of hermaphrodites or the intricacies of map-making
  may inform a Shakespeare play as much as, say, Shakespeare's literary
  precursors.
- questions
  of power and culture (especially the messy commingling of the social and
  the cultural or of the supposedly autonomous self and the cultural/ political
  institutions that in fact produce that self).
- MICHEL
  FOUCAULT is
- issues of power, epistemology, subjectivity, and ideology
- quite
  possibly the most influential critic of the last quarter-century.
- anecdotal approach
- fascination with history and the minute details of culture

What is New Historicism?

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new historicism

New Historicist often looks for ways in which populations are marginalized through a literary work
a theory applied to literature that suggests literature must be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic.
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- literature must be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic
- Unlike previous historical criticism, which limited itself to simply demonstrating how a work was reflective of its time, New Historicism evaluates how the work is influenced by the time in which it was produced. It also examines the social sphere in which the author moved, the psychological background of the author, the books and theories that may have influenced the author, and any other factors which influenced the work of art. All work is biased.
- acknowledges that any criticism of a work is necessarily tinged with the critic’s beliefs, social structure, and so on
- may begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves, their backgrounds, and their prejudices
- Both the work and the reader are corrupted by everything that has influenced them
- its main focus is to look at things outside of the work, instead of reading the text as a thing apart from the author.
- a psychological critic
- New Historicist often looks for ways in which populations are marginalized through a literary work
- any criticism of a work is necessarily tinged with the critic’s beliefs, social structure, and so on. Most New Historicists may begin a critical reading of a novel by explaining themselves
- their backgrounds, and their prejudices
- Both the work and the reader are corrupted by everything that has influenced them. New Historicism thus represents a significant change from previous critical theories like New Criticism, because its main focus is to look at things outside of the work, instead of reading the text as a thing apart from the author.
- draw from other forms of criticism, particularly the writings of Michel Foucault, who may be more properly termed a psychological critic
- The New Critic argues that literature should be read as a self contained work without considering influence
- Deconstructionists seem largely annoyed that New Historicists claim to be the only ones who admit that all texts, including their own interpretations, are biased.
- dichotomy. The fact that Austen wrote about a society to which she only marginally belonged can enhance the reading of her work. It might also help make sense of her broad critiques of “civilized” society.
- Criticisms of this literary theory are mostly levied by those who still practice New Criticism, as well as those who make up the Post-Modernist critics, such as Deconstructionists. The New Critic argues that literature should be read as a self contained work without considering influence. Deconstructionists seem largely annoyed that New Historicists claim to be the only ones who admit that all texts, including their own interpretations, are biased.

30 Dec 09

Mythology in Art

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mythology art painting

the great painting by Botticelli
an allegory
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- no art historian has ever been able to develop an interpretation that satisfies all the other scholars
- no consensus about why they are there or what they are up to
- we are encouraged to let our imagination write the script.
- The Revival Of Paganism In Art
- Western painting developed under the sponsorship of the Church
- its task was to envision the stories and spirit of the New Testament
- But by the midpoint (C.1482) of what we call the Italian Renaissance artists began to turn to painting the things which Christianity had kept secret above all the legends and stories of the pagan world. Although intended for a private owner rather than a public space, La Primavera is the first great counterimage to the Christian icons and symbols of Western art.
- invented by the ancient Greeks
- So why did they cling to their myths? Perhaps because neither philosophy nor science could explain what a human being was and, what human life is, as well as myths could.
- Homer and Hesiod, and later (when the Roman conquerors appropriated the Greek gods) Virgil and Ovid, told the mythical stories in unforgettable poems which still move audiences.
- A myth quite simply is a story which serves a purpose: to explain the origins of something (Tintoretto's Origins of the Milky Way) to justify something, or to serve as a warning (Titian's Diana and Actaeon) or an example or a symbol. Such a story is usually easy to understand, involving strong and simple emotions and clear and basic relationships.
- The great myths illustrate and explain to each generation something about the order of the world and the relationships between gods and humans. They also serve as the paradigms of human excellence. Thus Alexander copied Achilles, and Caesar copied Alexander, and Pope Julius copied Caesar.
- The ancient Greeks emphasized that these unions produced gods and goddesses who are symbols of those humanizing features which distinguish men from other animals.
- For almost a thousand years the stories of the pagan gods were banished from the public mind.
- It was only during the Renaissance that patrons like the Medici and his circle of humanist scholars began to rediscover the legacy of Greece and Rome. In attempting to envision this pagan world they were faced with a huge problem. For visually, it was a lost world.
- Mythology soon became a justification for Renaissance and Post-Renaissance artists to paint with a new freedom and boldness denied them by Christianity.
- In his legendary bonfires of the vanities he urged the citizens to burn all pagan works.
- distinguished above all by mastery of color and an intuitive response to nature.
- We must turn to Venice if we wish to see the real flourishing of the pagan vision in art.
- mood became the primary subject of their art. Atmosphere composed of light and shadow softened and unified landscape and the figures in it. Such painting not only gives immediate pleasure to the eye, but acts like music upon the moods, provoking thought and memory in the same way that a work of music does.
- focused on the sensuous surface of things, on color and texture.
- the new use of mythology
- Giorgione
- Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Picnic on the Grass), loosely suggested by Giorgione's Concert Champêtre (see above), spelled the death knell of the mythological nude
- No supernatural or religious connotations were necessary to make the paintings of the Impressionists the most popular paintings the world has ever known.
- list of important paintings and artists
- Joseph Phelan.

24 Dec 09

Oil paint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Oil paints have been used in England since the 13th century for simple decoration,^[1] but were not widely adopted as an artistic medium until the 15th century.

Just the Myths Ma'am

"myth"

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sheep myth murakami

What is Haruki Murakami's special magic? How does he keep us involved in this wild sheep chase, all the way to the bitter end? Without question, he has help from Alfred Birnbaum, who seems more like his spiritual twin than merely his translator. Reading primitive and ancient myths in the late 1980's can seem like an artificial exercise, even with Joseph Campbell's much popularized reminders that they hold the clue to our salvation both as individuals and as a species. We knit our brows striving to identify with Shiva or with the Navajo Spider Woman. But in Haruki Murakami's tale we are on our own despoiled modern turf (a turf as international as it is locally Japanese), hearing our own irreverent colloquial language, the Esperanto of the postatomic generation.

A Wild Sheep Chase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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sheep myth muracami

Murakami blends elements of American and English literature with Japanese contexts, exploring post-WWII Japanese cultural identity

Each uisge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Each Uisge, a supernatural water horse found in the Highlands of Scotland
cattle and sheep were also often prey to the each uisge

Scotland Guide - Scottish History - The Picts

"sheep"

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sheep myth scottish picts

Roman in 310 A.D.
Caereni, (people of the sheep)

fare thee well, sweet myth - Herald Scotland | Sport | SPL | Aberdeen

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sheep myth scottish

shame over what Highlanders did when they hacked out a homestead for themselves abroad.
''This is primarily the story of emigration from the Highlands and Islands, which are culturally, socially and economically different from other parts of Britain,''
''
How much emigration was by choice, or because the landlord sent in the heavy team?
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- We do know, however, that before the Clearances really started in earnest there was massive emigration going on
- What also tends to be disregarded is the fact that by the 1870s, with the famine and the hard economic depression over, people were leaving again, this time voluntarily.
- it's never simply a matter of voluntary emigration or forced emigration; it's never cut and dried
- ''Broadly speaking, you can say that up until the 1820s, most emigration is led by the tacksmen, and to a certain extent is voluntary. From the 1820s to the 1850s, a period of sheep farming clearance culminating in the potato famine, one can argue that it is largely a period of forced emigration.''
  But many people made a deliberate choice to leave, and prepared well for their departure, going abroad with strong motives to better themselves.
- ''not a history of victims''.
- They took in the mountains of New Zealand. The US. Chile. Argentina.
- How did they track down the descendants of Highlanders?
- Greta MacKenzie has popularised Patagonian-Highland history; she brought to light an indispensable list of contacts for Patagonia.''
- ''First and foremost the history of Highland emigration is a positive one. You look at these people, and the societies they created, and almost exclusively they had lives for the better. Certainly their descendants had lives for the better. The myths of the Highland Clearances have obscured that to a large extent. They are proud of the pioneering spirit with which their ancestors set about establishing themselves in their new countries. Almost always they talk about it as having been a better life than the one their ancestors left behind in Scotland. When you ask them whether there is any regret that they are Americans or Canadians, rather than Scots, the answer is no.''
- ''In America and Canada I was surprised at the genuine appreciation and understanding of where their people came from. Many of them are more aware of Highland history than the majority of Scots. It's exploded for me the myth of the American tourist coming to Scotland to find his or her roots. These people of Highland descent really do know what they're looking for. It's so important to them because that is where they take their roots from.''

The Year of Sheep - Scots Protest against The Highland Clearances | SCOTTISH CLANS BLOG FROM SCOTLAND

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sheep myth clearances scottish celts

Scotland's sheep industry is worth more than £165m
217 years ago, the Government were doing quite the opposite, Scots were being banished from their homeland, threatened with execution if they refused.
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- The Highland Clearances’ some inhabitants of Scotland did protest. In a year that was to become known as ‘The Year of Sheep’, there is evidence of a series of organised protests using one of Scotland’s most important exports- sheep.
- In 1872 during The Highland Clearances a wedding party declared war on sheep and decided to undertake the ambitious job of driving thousands of sheep from the hills of Easter Ross and Sutherland. The majority of them members of the Ross family of Strathrusdale This escalated to 4 days later becoming a massive riotous group of 400 men. The Ross-shire Sheep Riots had begun.

Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend

"sheep"

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sheep myth celts scottish

sheep that had
snow-white fleeces.

History of the Scottish Haggis-Happy Haggis

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sheep myth celts haggis

the early 9th century
Vikings landed in Scotland, they brought with them what was basically a boil-in-the-bag food parcel, containing scraps of meat and grains, wrapped in muslin.
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- The Scottish people of that time adopted the Vikings idea of keeping scraps of meat and grains in a food parcel as a ready-to-cook meal. However, they discovered they could use the stomach of the sheep instead of wrapping the ingredients in precious cloth - they wasted nothing in those days, and it continued in this way for hundreds of years.
- the 12th century
- The French word ‘Hachis’ means minced meat,
- the mid 13th century

Celtic Attic: Celts facts and fiction - Animal Mythology

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sheep myth celts

Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend: Chapter II. The Coming of Angus and Bride

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sheep myth

Bride took the fleece

14 Dec 09

Roland Barthes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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barthes

interrogate pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to assert its values upon others.
semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations
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- portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating).
- bourgeois cultural myths were second-order signs, or connotations
- the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it
- this adulteration of signs could easily be translated into words
- Barthes' Mythologies became absorbed into bourgeois culture, as he found many third parties asking him to comment on a certain cultural phenomenon, being interested in his control over his readership
- question the overall utility of demystifying culture for the masses, thinking it might be a fruitless attempt, and drove him deeper in his search for individualistic meaning in art.
- focused on revealing the importance of language in writing, which he felt was overlooked by old criticism.
- examining the correspondence between the structure of a sentence and that of a larger narrative, thus allowing narrative to be viewed along linguistic lines
- three hierarchical levels: ‘functions’, ‘actions’ and ‘narrative’
- Thus, his structuralist theorizing became another exercise in his ongoing attempts to dissect and expose the misleading mechanisms of bourgeois culture.
- Derrida identified the flaw of structuralism as its reliance on a transcendental signified; a symbol of constant, universal meaning would be essential as an orienting point in such a closed off system. This is to say that without some regular standard of measurement, a system of criticism that references nothing outside of the actual work itself could never prove useful. But since there are no symbols of constant and universal significance, the entire premise of structuralism as a means of evaluating writing (or anything) is hollow.
- consider the limitations not just of signs and symbols, but also of Western culture’s dependency on beliefs of constancy and ultimate standards.
- Japanese culture’s contentment in the absence of a search for a transcendental signified
- no emphasis on a great focus point by which to judge all other standards, describing the centre of Tokyo, the Emperor’s Palace, as not a great overbearing entity, but a silent and non-descript presence, avoided and unconsidered
- “The Death of the Author”
- the notion of the author, or authorial authority, in the criticism of literary text as the forced projection of an ultimate meaning of the text.
- the great proliferation of meaning in language and the unknowable state of the author’s mind makes any such ultimate realization impossible.

Fascism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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fascism syncretism

a fasces was a bundle of sticks used symbolically for the power through unity

Jonathan Milburn's Public Library

JSTOR: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 3-13

WRITING RESEARCH ESSAYS

Introduction to Stephen Greenblatt, Module on History

Introduction to New Historicism

General Introduction to New Historicism

What is New Historicism?

Mythology in Art

Oil paint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just the Myths Ma'am

A Wild Sheep Chase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Each uisge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scotland Guide - Scottish History - The Picts

fare thee well, sweet myth - Herald Scotland | Sport | SPL | Aberdeen

The Year of Sheep - Scots Protest against The Highland Clearances | SCOTTISH CLANS BLOG FROM SCOTLAND

Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend

History of the Scottish Haggis-Happy Haggis

Celtic Attic: Celts facts and fiction - Animal Mythology

Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend: Chapter II. The Coming of Angus and Bride

Roland Barthes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fascism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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