cultural - history interrogation

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My question is about the nature of the second inquiry or the definition of Cultural-Historical

interrogation. What is interrogation and how what are the different methods that we can teach it.

According to Miami plan Cultural-Historical Interrogation is in-depth interrogation of the historical

and cultural contexts shaping the production and the reception of texts. All texts are composed and

read by persons situated in particular contexts that change over timeand those distributions and

circulations change their meanings. We have what in literary criticism is called Old Historicism, the approach which sees text as a

product of specific culture or history.

Second we have the notion of writer as the one who shape a text under the influence of the

specific time and place s/he lives in.

How are digital technologies -- such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, cell phones, wireless

technology, etc. -- changing the way we write and communicate with each other and the way we learn?

http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/112_Team-25

The questions which are here on wiki sound sociological and anthropological rather than literary. They

are either concerned with the influence of modern media on society or with the role of society in the

formation of our understanding of media and text. In other words they want to know HOW MODERN

READER READS A TEXT. What are the social and digital forces which shape and reshape his reading?

Now back to our main question what is the second enquiry looking for what we can gather from this

scattered objective is reader-response criticism. How a reader reads a text and what does that reading tell

about the reader and his society?

So we are at the point where Miamis plans two objectives are in front of us:

1- A reading based on Old Historicist approach which tries to situate the text in a historical

background

2- A reader-response criticism which instead of readers psyche is involved in tracing the cultural-

historical context of such reading, in the other words, an Old Historical reading again. It is old in

the sense that it looks at one element (namely history or culture) as superior to another (namely

text or reader).

What I would like to do among the introductory activities to inquiry #2 is to introduce what literary

criticism calls New Historical Approach or Cultural Poetics which challenges or goes against what they

call Old Historicism.

As an introductory activity we read a literary text (for example Act I of ShakespearesKing Learbased on

its cultural and ideological backgrounds for example based on Elizabethan concept of cosmic order and

Great Chain of Being). There are references in this act which shows connection to culture and traditions

of society of time (These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of

nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects, love cools,

friendship falls off, brothers divide).
http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/112_Team-25http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/112_Team-25http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/112_Team-25


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Old Historicism New Historicism; Cultural Poetics

History as written is an accurate view of what

is really occurred.

1- History is subjective.

2- It is one of many discourses or ways of seeing

the world.

3- History is shaped by the people who lived it. History serves as a background to literature 1- The interrelatedness of all human activities

The historical background of the text is only

secondarily important, for it is the aesthetic

object, the text that mirrors the history of its

time.

1- This approach is trying to address Foucaults

tireless questioning of the nature of literature,

history, culture, and society.

By applying the historical context to the texts

the critic believes that he or she can formulate

a more accurate interpretation of texts than if

s/he did not know such historical context.

1- Viewing a text as culture in action, these critics

blur the distinction between an artistic

production and any other kind of social

production or event.1- As all of society is intricately interwoven, so are

critics and texts, both to each other and in the

culture. Since all critics are influenced by the

culture in which they live, New Historicists

believe that they cannot escape public and

private cultural influences.1- The social concerns of the author, of the

historical times evidenced in the work, and of

other cultural elements exhibited in the text

before we can device a valid interpretation.

1- Following Foucault history for New Historicist

becomes that complex interrelationship of a

variety of discourses, the various ways-artistic,

social, political, and so on-that people think and

talk about their world.

1- Cultural Poetics critics believe that all texts are

really social documents that reflect but also, and

more importantly, respond to their historical

situation. Historical periods evidences a single, political

worldview

1- To unlock textual meaning a Cultural Poetic

critic investigates three areas of concerns: the

life of the author, the social rules and dictates

found within a text, and a reflection of a

works historical situation as evidenced in the

text.

After learning all these I continue by analyzing a short story by Hawthorn based on New Historical

approach where Hawthorn is concerned with Puritan history. And the question will be what social forces

are at work here? What ideological forces are at work? How the authors standpoint is different from the


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historical records and how he presented this in his work? What factors made the authors response

different from the historical evidences? Other questions:

http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/English_698/Elham%2C_Chanon%2C_Brent

%2C_Amir%2C_Ben

Work Cited:

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994.
http://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/English_698/Elham%2C_Chanon%2C_Brent%2C_Amir%2C_Benhttp://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/English_698/Elham%2C_Chanon%2C_Brent%2C_Amir%2C_Benhttp://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/English_698/Elham%2C_Chanon%2C_Brent%2C_Amir%2C_Benhttp://wiki.lib.muohio.edu/composition/index.php/English_698/Elham%2C_Chanon%2C_Brent%2C_Amir%2C_Ben

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