New Historicism

New Historicism is an interesting combination of literature and history.  And when I say that it's a combination of literature and history, I mean that it looks at literature to examine history.  It's a very postmodern idea, and is one of the few aspects of postmodernism that I actually can understand.

Fun fact: Calling something "Postmodern" is a great way to look intellectual without actually knowing anything.

Back on topic, New Historicists believe that classical works can't be examined through modern viewpoints, because those viewpoints are modern constructions.  Because they didn't exist when the piece was written, we can't apply them to the work.  Also, they believe that any analysis or criticism of a piece of literature will tell you more about the time in which the analysis criticism was written than anything about the actual literature.

So how do New Historicists look at literature?  They get back into the mind-frame of the time.  Think a character has a mental illness?  Then you've got to think about it in terms of the mental health treatment of that period, even if it seems insane now.  They can use concurrent literature as sources (with a broad definition of "literature" meaning anything that was written, including records), but works from other times are out.