The New Historicism and Heart of Darkness

Abstract

The tide of Brook Thomas’s The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (1991) is telling. Whenever an emergent theory, movement, method, approach, or group gets labeled with the adjective “new,” trouble is bound to ensue, for what is new today is either established, old, or forgotten tomorrow. Few of you will have heard of the band called “The New Kids on the Block.” New Age book shops and jewelry may seem “old hat” by the time this introduction is published. The New Criticism, or formalism, is just about the oldest approach to literature and literary study currently being practiced. The new historicism, by contrast, is not as old-fashioned as formalism, but it is hardly new, either. The term “new” eventually and inevitably requires some explanation. In the case of the new historicism, the best explanation is historical.