"New historicism" as a postmodern discourse of contemporaneity

Abstract

The classical historicist paradigm of cognition of historical reality has been subjected to devastating criticism by the latest postmodern concepts. The article is devoted to one of these concepts - the «new historicism». Based on the classics of the «new historicism», the author identifies its main features, which include a) textualisation of history (transition of historical research into literary analysis and vice versa), b) contextual analysis of a literary work (marking «representations»), c) denial of the idea of «neutrality» of literature in relation to specific historical conditions, d) coexistence of determinism of the text and certainty of discursive practices. The «new historicism» is distinguished from the deconstruction methodology by the historicisation of modernity and the principle of recontextualisation, and from the post-structuralist methodology by the distinction between text and context. The author concludes that the «new historicism» does not claim to have universal significance or methodological perfection of its postulates. It only offers to look at the process of human development outside the limited framework of classical historical, philosophical and literary constructions, thus gaining popularity and significance in the wider Western scientific community.