Historicism

This entry explores a range of strategies that can productively foster greater historical understanding of women writers’ works, as well as awareness of the limits on that understanding. The strategies explored include attending to the layers of time sedimented in modern editions; situating a text in relation to its moment of composition, publication, or consumption; considering the source; expanding our reading practices; and assessing the provenance of memorable quips or commemorative monuments. Refusing reductive oppositions, the entry urges instead that we consider both how the past is different and how it is similar, how history consists both of happenings and the figurations, stories, and words through which we experience, understand, and record them. In the eclecticism of method, the gaps in our evidence, and the tension between now and then, we find our opportunities to make useful knowledge collectively, self-consciously, and creatively.