New historicism

New Historicism is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the premise that a literary work should be considered a product of the time, place and circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated creation of genius. It had its roots in a reaction to the "New Criticism" of formal analysis of works of literature that were seen by a new generation of professional readers as taking place in a vacuum. New Historicism developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, and gained widespread influence in the 1990s.

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documented the new discipline of the history of ideas. Michel Foucault based his approach both on his theory of the limits of collective cultural knowledge and on his technique of examining a broad array of documents in order to understand the episteme of a particular time. New Historicism is claimed to be a more neutral approach to historical events, and is sensitive towards different cultures.