Tbilisi State University
Ph.D. Candidate
Tbilisi/Georgia 
marisimonishvili13@gmail.com

Abstract

New Historicism represents one of the most interesting and significant approaches in literary criticism. The term emerged in the 1980s and reflects an attempt to encourage readers to perceive literature within a specific context and to examine it in relation to cultural and political processes. The central premise of this approach is that text and history mutually constitute one another; within New Historicism, a text is understood as a product of its time. Literature, therefore, is not merely a reflection of history but also a means of generating new forms of public thought.

New Historicism is largely based on Michel Foucault’s idea that power is everywhere. Literature creates a social mechanism through which distinctions between norm and anomaly are established. New Historicism is interested in ordinary individuals and their everyday practices, as well as in marginalised groups rather than in major historical events. The primary objective is no longer to uncover the author’s intention but to identify the cultural energy of a particular period.

It is impossible to understand New Historicism without Michel Foucault. His theory leads to the conclusion that power is not limited to physical coercion but is dispersed through language and knowledge. A literary text forms part of power relations: it may reinforce an existing episteme or, conversely, contribute to its weakening. To illustrate this argument and demonstrate the tendencies of New Historicism, two authors may be considered: William Shakespeare, through his analysis of historical power, and George Orwell, through his critique of political systems.

Shakespeare’s plays stage the performance of power, while in Orwell’s works power falsifies history. New Historicism seeks to identify the relationship between literature and power. The central idea expressed by both Shakespeare and Orwell is that individuals are shaped and governed by the political context of their time. In Shakespeare’s period, the theatre was not merely a space of entertainment; it was also a place in which the state tested and displayed its authority before an audience. In Orwell’s novel 1984, power eliminates words in order to make independent thought impossible. This continues the Foucauldian line of argument and represents an attempt to restrict linguistic discourse.

New Historicism may, in a certain sense, be regarded as a postmodernist approach to history. One of the defining features of postmodernism is the rejection of metanarratives, and New Historicism likewise focuses on minor histories and individual stories. Roland Barthes’s theory of the “death of the author” is also relevant to New Historicism. In postmodernist literature, particularly in the works of Umberto Eco, New Historicist tendencies are expressed in their fullest form. For Eco, history is an immense labyrinth, while the author engages in an endless play with texts.

It is especially interesting to examine how New Historicism manifests itself in Georgian literature. To illustrate this issue, the present study considers the creative tendencies of the Georgian postmodernist author Givi Margvelashvili. An analysis of Margvelashvili’s prose supports the view that history is a struggle among competing discourses. The writer’s central idea is that the human being is a book character who lives within the world of the text. According to Margvelashvili, existence itself is textual, which constitutes another original attempt to conceptualise New Historicism.

Keywords: New Historicism; Michel Foucault; power; postmodernism; Givi Margvelashvili.