Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [179]
It is not only the author whose role is complicated by New Historicism; the critic also is subject to some of the same qualifications and restrictions. According to Adam Begley, “it is the essence of the newhistoricist project to uncover the moments at which works of art absorb and refashion social energy, an endless process of circulation and exchange” (39). In other words, the work is both affected by and affects the culture. But if this is so, how then can we decide which elements of culture (and text) are causes and which are effects? If we add the critic to this picture, the process does indeed appear endless. The New Historicists’ relationship with their culture infuses itself into their assessment of the Renaissance, and this assessment may in turn become part of their own self-fashioning process, which will affect their interpretations, and so forth.…
Notice that this writer incorporates the quotation into her own chain of thinking. By paraphrasing the quotation (“In other words”), she arrives at a question (“how then”) that follows as a logical consequence of accepting its position (“but if this is so”). Note, however, that she does not then label the quotation right or wrong. Instead, she tries to figure out to what position it might lead and to what possible problems.
By contrast, the writer of the following excerpt, from a paper comparing two films aimed at teenagers, settles for plugging in sources as answers and consequently does not pursue the questions implicit in her quotations.
In both films, the adults are one-dimensional caricatures, evil beings whose only goal in life is to make the kids’ lives a living hell. In Risky Business, director Paul Brickman’s solution to all of Joel’s problems is to have him hire a prostitute and then turn his house into a whorehouse. Of course, as one critic observes, “the prostitutes who make themselves available to his pimply faced buddies are all centerfold beauties: elegant, svelte, benign and unquestionably healthy (after all, what does V.D. have to do with prostitutes?)” (Gould 41)—not exactly a realistic or legal solution. Allan Moyle, the director of Pump Up the Volume, provides an equally unrealistic solution to Mark’s problem. According to David Denby, Moyle “offers self-expression as the cure to adolescent funk. Everyone should start his own radio station and talk about his feelings” (59). Like Brickman, Moyle offers solutions that are neither realistic nor legal.
This writer is having a hard time figuring out what to do with sources that offer well-phrased and seemingly accurate answers (such as “self-expression is the cure to adolescent funk”). She settles for the bland conclusion that films aimed at teenagers are not “realistic”—an observation that most readers would already recognize as true. But unlike the writer of the previous example, she does not ask herself, “If this is true, then what follows?” Some version of the So what? question might have led her to inquire how the illegality of the solutions is related to their unrealistic quality. So what, for example, that the main characters in both films are not marginalized as criminals and made to suffer for their illegal actions, but rather are celebrated as heroes? What different kinds of illegality do the two films apparently condone, and how might these be related to the different decades in which each film was produced? Rather than use her sources to think with, in order to clarify or complicate the issues, the writer has used them to confirm a fairly obvious generalization.
Strategy 5: Put Your Sources Into