Historicity without historicism?

Abstract

After persisting as a dominant -and, in the view of some, dominating -practice for a quarter century, historicism is finally getting the unceremonious bum's rush reserved for faltering disciplinary tendencies. Does this mean that literary criticism is about to become, or could meaningfully be, post-historical? Obviously not. No complete account of a text can afford to neglect such matters as the pressures of history and hors-texte upon its form or the eruptions of externally-influenced materials within its bounds. Claims by the more strident wing of new formalists that aesthetic analysis can proceed without history can be understood more as disciplinary self-staging, bluster and spaceclearing than as a revelation of anything significantly 'new.' Besides, as medievalists and premodernists, we have our own special stake in registering the differences that history makes. If we were ever to concede that nothing would be lost by resituating medieval texts in a timeless analytical present and analyzing them formally without regard to history's claims, our specialization would not be long for this disciplinary world. Ceding an interest in the past, r