A movement in literary and cultural criticism that began in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, largely in Renaissance and Shakespeare studies, but eventually branching out to connect with a variety of other topic areas such as Postcolonial Studies. Greenblatt, Stephenâs Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) is usually credited with being the inaugurating text of the movement, although the term itself wasnât minted until The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance (1982). Greenblattâs name is undoubtedly the one most closely associated with New Historicism, though of course there are several others involved as well such as Catherine Gallagher, Jeffrey Knapp, Louis Montrose, Stephen Orgel, and Walter Benn Michaels. New Historicism does not have a specific methodology, at least not one as rigorously worked out as, say, psychoanalysis and is in many respects anti-theoretical in its outlook. Its actual practice of reading texts is not dissimilar to the model of âclose readingâ espoused by both New Criticism and Practical Criticism. Where it differs from its precursors, however, is in its conviction that literary texts can in fact tell us something about the world outside of the text, something that both New Criticism and Practical Criticism explicitly proscribe. But unlike historical materialism, with which it is frequently compared (not the least because Greenblatt studied with Williams, Raymond at Cambridge), it takes the view that the interpretation of cultural texts better enables us to understand history, rather than the other way round as historical materialism would insist. Opponents of New Historicism, like Jameson, Fredric, argue that cultural texts are symptoms of history, whereas for New Historicism cultural texts are agents of history; they are the means by which history is made. This view rests on the idea that history itself comprises performances, representations, and symbolic exchanges. New Historicism draws on the work of Foucault, Michel, particularly his late work on power and subject, as well as Geertz, Clifford, especially his concept of âthick descriptionâ. Further Reading: J. Brannigan New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (1998). C. Colebrook New Literary Histories (1997). A. Veeser (ed.) The New Historicism (1989).