historicist
- noun
- /hɪˈstɔrɪsɪst/
- Specialized
- For a new historicist, literature is no cool reflection on a "background" of stable and unified historical fact.
- New Historicists
Examples
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For historicists, all human thought is historically determined, not simply historically conditioned, as no reasonable person would deny.
Academic text (1993) -
As a dedicated historicist, she believes that understanding the social context of the 19th century is crucial to interpreting the literature of that time.
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But the New Historicists have conducted all their field within the academy.
Academic text (1992) -
So that what if this historicist question or to understand Shakespeare you have to know all the details about Elizabethan England and so on, is wrong.
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To be sure, the journal Representations, which promulgated "new historicist" approaches, has published many outstanding, indeed groundbreaking, essays by historians.
Academic text (2005) -
In developing this aspect of historicism with a new intensity, the New Historicists are the heirs of Michel Foucault.
Academic text (1993) -
In his analysis, the historicist argued that all events must be viewed within the complex web of their historical circumstances.
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The lecture focused on the contributions of historicists who emphasize the importance of context in studying past events.
How Future-Oriented
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word historicist comes from history ('study of the past') and -ist ('one who'). So a historicist is a person who believes we must understand ideas, events, or works by their history, much like a historian who looks to the past to explain things.