الفهرس 
New Historicism and Cultural MaterialismOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The thesis adopts a twofold purpose: firstly, to examine the contributions of two major critical tendencies, namely New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, secondly, to examine the contributions of the critical enterprises of two considerable literary critics, namely the American New Historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt and the British Cultural Materialist critic Alan Sinfield, to the development of contemporary literary criticism. Moreover, the thesis attempts to provide a contrastive study between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in general, and Greenblatt and Sinfield in particular.
Generally speaking, the thesis adopts a historical orientation in order to trace the development of Cultural Studies towards the emergence of the New Historicist enterprise as well as tracing its evolution towards the rise of the Cultural Materialist project. Therefore, the thesis attempts to examine the historical background, the cultural formations, and the major influences that led to the emergence of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in general, and Stephen Greenblatt and Alan Sinfield’s critical enterprises in particular.
Particularly, the thesis adopts a two-fold methodology: descriptive and contrastive. On the one hand, the thesis aims to represent the underlying theoretical assumptions as well as practical premises of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism especially those of Greenblatt and Sinfield. On the other hand, it attempts to establish a contrast between New Historicism in general and Greenblatt and Sinfield in particular. Trying to do justice to the main topic of the thesis, the analysis focuses on and contrasts the New Historicist politics of conservatism, particularlyGreenblatt’s entrapment model of subversion-containment as well as the Cultural Materialist politics of dissidence especially Sinfield’s strategy of faultlines.
Since the contrastive methodology constitutes the backbone of the thesis, the study inevitably works at three levels: the theoretical assumptions and the practical methodologies of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism;Greenblatt’s and Sinfield’s critical enterprises; and the politics of conservatism and the politics of dissidence. Moreover, the thesis represents the New Historicist conservative reading of literature in contrast to the Cultural Materialist dissident reading of it. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on Greenblatt’s monolithic concept of power in contrast to Sinfield’s multi-dimensional one.
Strictly speaking, the thesis aims to historicize the New Historicist enterprise and the Cultural Materialist project in general, and Stephen Greenblatt’s politics of conservatism as well as Alan Sinfield’s politics of dissidence in particular. In other words, the thesis considers the historical circumstances, including the economic, political, social, cultural, academic, and literary atmosphere, which surrounded the emergence of American New Historicism and British Cultural Materialism in literary criticism as well as the emergence of their major representatives Stephen Greenblatt in North American academy and Alan Sinfield in British academy. Historicizing the two critical tendencies is of pivotal importance in order to grasp not only the bases of the theoretical assumptions and the critical practices of the New Historicist enterprise and the Cultural Materialist project but also the bases of the intellectual ideologies of their most prominent theorists and practitioners Stephen Greenblatt and Alan Sinfield.
While regarding the New Historicist enterprise as the most hotly debated and the most controversial literary-critical movement in the AmericanAcademy, the Cultural Materialist project is considered to be the British more radical alternative critical movement of the New Historicist one. whereas the New Historicist enterprise limited its hegemony within the literary-critical Academy, the Cultural Materialist project widens the scope of its influence in order to include a survey of the social formations and the cultural constructions of society. Moreover, the New Historicist enterprise focuses its analysis on the past, in spite of claiming to provide a link between the past and the present, while the Cultural Materialist project stresses more forcefully the influence of the past on the present. In general, the New Historicist enterprise is mainly concerned with only one aspect of culture while the Cultural Materialist project is almost entirely interested in culture, with all its different aspects, as a whole way of life. Also, the New Historicist enterprise remains within the realm of the presentation of the literary texts of the past, particularly Shakespearean Literature, whereas the Cultural Materialist project focuses on the representation of those literary texts of the past in contemporary culture.
The main point of difference between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, which is also the cornerstone of this thesis, is that New Historicism restricts its enterprise to a mere presentation of the conflicts between the dominant culture and the marginalized subcultures, while Cultural Materialism is committed to offer a critique of the ideological strategies and cultural formations of the dominant system and most importantly the internal contradictions that lie within that dominant ideology.
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism were both greatly influenced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault and British Neo-Marxist critic Raymond Williams, but while the former is closely related to Foucault’s early form of power-structures, the latter owes its radical political methodology to Williams. In spite of their equal political inspirations, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism adopt completely distinctive approaches. On the one hand, New Historicism is a conservative form of political criticism which is only committed to represent thepower-structures, ideological strategies, social formations, and cultural constructions of the dominant culture. On the other, Cultural Materialism is a radical form of political criticism which is committed not only to interpret the various power-structures, ideological strategies, social formations, and cultural constructions of the whole society but also to change it.
To recapitulate, since the New Historicist enterprise of Stephen Greenblatt and the Cultural Materialist project of Alan Sinfield are mainly derived from the poststructuralist movement which is an attack on logocentricism, both of them focus on decentring the concepts of literature, by and large, culture. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism provide an opening up of new possibilities. By the same token, Greenblatt and Sinfield pave the way for the new voices of Others, which were previously excluded from the traditional approaches of literary criticism. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism are examples of the much-needed critical practice which aims at representing the culture of the Otherness, that shows great interest in including the subordinated, the marginalized, and the oppressed alongside with the dominant ruling culture with the purpose of truly introducing culture as a whole way of life. As the political goal of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism is their keen interest in human freedom, the methodologies of their critical movements which they apply in dealing with such human freedom are different. While the American dogmatism of Greenblatt’s enterprise suggests a conservative critical politics in dealing with literature, by and large, culture, the British Marxist origin of Sinfield’s project suggests a dissident one. In spite of claiming to provide political modes of criticism which include diverse cultural groups, New Historicism introduces a neutral form of political criticism which reinforce the mainstream culture through suppressing any form of alien subcultures in order to maintain the ideological power of the mainstream culture, while Cultural Materialism proposes a biased form of political criticism which focuses mainly on contemporary politics while ignoring literature and history altogether.