New Historicism

Nineteenth-century Britain, also known as the Victorian Britain, was the age of prosperity, advancement, the dominance of the British Empire, liberality, and enhancements in diverse social grounds. Through the light of New Historicist approach, the present study comes to critically question the idealism of the Victorian era and particularly that of the 1880s. Through exploring George Bernard Shaw’s Widower’s House it is intended to provide an illuminating understanding of the different aspects of the Victorian England. Focusing on the works of literature, New Historicist critical stadnpoint brings about less subjective views towards the past and a clearer view of all incidents. The present study seeks to demonstrate that England, and more specifically London as the centre of the nineteenth-century world, was not the suggested paradise described in newspapers but rather a city in which poverty enslaved people and suffocated them in dreadful houses built around the city without having basic facilities. Sartorious in Widowers’ Houses , as a brutal slum landlord who keeps his tenants in such a dreadful condition, represents the owners of such indecent houses which have been rented to poor classes of society. This research lastly demonstrates the controversy of the state of the city suggested by authorities and the true state suggested by the author. 

This research paper is an investigation of Khaled Hosseini’s seminal fiction The Kite Runner from the perspective of New Historicist approach of reading a literary work. The concepts of history and discourse, recurrently employed by Foucault, Montrose, and Greenblatt, provide the theoretical background of the present research. The plot of the novel is devoted to presenting a vivid picture of the socio-cultural conditions of Afghanistan at the period of war and crisis. During the time, many wars and conflicts were imposed upon Afghanistan for the interests of foreign powers. Russia invaded Afghanistan, and it ended up in Taliban war, hunger, uncertainty in the subjects’ lives, and refugees question. Russian army had destroyed the village, school, and natural resources of Afghanistan while America indirectly dominated there to support the Taliban against Russia in the cold war period. The Kite Runner including historical facts about Afghanistan’s multi-layered conditions, let the readers face the true nature of war, terrorism, and Taliban in the country. Exploring the cultural crisis and ethnic conflict represented in the novel is conducted in a close association with the New Historicist’s concept of “textuality of history and historicity of text”.