Introduction

Abstract

The relationship of literature and history is more complicated than critics and historians either used to realise, or were prepared to acknowledge. In the era of the New Criticism, indeed, students of literature were encouraged simply to ignore historical background when interpreting the text, even though, as Wayne C. Booth later remarked, that ‘all literary interpretation is […] dependent on history should have been obvious to everyone’ (A Rhetoric of Irony, p. 132n). Other objectors to the relevance of historical context argued ‘that the meanings of the past are intrinsically alien to us, that we have no “authentic” access to those meanings and therefore can never “truly” understand them’ (E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, p. 40). More recently, deconstruction has once again drawn attention to the problems attending those who wish to bring historical information to bear on the task of interpretation. Historians, on the other hand, have often been reluctant even to address the methodological issues surrounding the use of literary evidence, and have tended to content themselves with the anecdotal, plundering novels or plays for juicy quotations, and so on. But before they can mean anything at all, sources have to be interpreted.

Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heav’n bestows on thee. Submit—In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony, not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, ‘Whatever IS, is RIGHT.’

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1743), pp. 25–7