Chapter Problems Associated with New Historicism of Critical Theory 5: Phenomenology and New Historicism by Literary Criticism

The philosopher Michael Oakeshott has pointed out that a student of the past cannot learn the history of something without first discovering what kind of thing it is. In this respect, the New Historicism is not a genuine historical inquiry; it does not inquire into the true nature of literary works, because it is confident it already knows what they are. They are agents of ideology. Contrary to appearances, the movement is not an effort to discover what it means for a literary work to be historical; it is really little more than an attempt to get literary works to conform to a particular vision of history. For the university as a whole the movement represents a further stage in literary scholarship's progressive abandonment of literature.