Just Call Me Linus

I was very interested in the ideas behind New Historicism. It seems to me that this is one of the more logical theories that we have looked at. It is not concerned with identifying the intention of the author being examined, but rather the relations between the literary texts of a time period on those texts that are seen as not having a valued literary merit. This makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t believe that you can ever separate a text from its context, and the introduction of the idea of the co-text takes that a step further. We can never truly understand an author’s intention, even an author writing within our own time period. It seems like a futile exercise to try and find meaning only in the words of a piece of literature. It makes more sense that we would try to create a network of written record from a given time period in order to identify the larger world of the text. The use of non-fiction pieces of literature can provide a different perspective on a literary work. By incorporating different genres of literature, theorists can provide a far-reaching lens with which to view a primary text. Of course, there is the questions of which pieces are used to create this lens. There is always going to be a bias brought to a piece when individuals are allowed to choose the particular stance from which to view it. The co-texts can be chosen in order to support one view over another. The fact that theorists use individual passages from texts in order to illustrate a particular point only adds to this sense of bias. It seems to me though, that all of the theories we have explored this far have at least some level of bias integrated into them. It is just a matter of finding the bias you are comfortable with and making it your own. I feel pretty comfortable with slanted lens. I may have found my theory security blanket.