How Foucault Assumptions Of Power And Discourse Are Pervasive Influence On New Historicism

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As mentioned before, Michel Foucault and his assumptions of power and discourse are pervasive influence on New Historicism. Frank Lentricchia asserts that Old historicists are politically innocent-issues of ideology and class conflict rarely touch their literary work. Greenblatt more or less tells us that they needed to open their Marx. New historicists not only have reopened their Marx; they have embraced Michel Foucault (the deeper theoretical influence on their work), and the effect of this (I think uncritical) acceptance is traced everywhere in new historicism in the coded term “power.” (qtd. in Veeser 234) Power has been analyzed and discussed by a number of critics and writers in differnet books and articles. Among those one can mention