لخّصلي

(Himmelfarb162).History, in this sense, functions as a guide to the new historicist, a lantern that illuminates and helps him read what lies behind the lines.New historicists are in search of a bridge to link the past with the present through literature.

(Himmelfarb162). History, in this sense, functions as a guide to the new historicist, a lantern that illuminates and helps him read what lies behind the lines. New historicists are in search of a bridge to link the past with the present through literature. In Raslan's words, "New historicism struggles to construct the present in terms of the past by revisiting and reviewing our images of the past" (Raslan 8).

In fact, new historicists, like postmodernists, view history as a group of events that are loosely connected to one another. That is why one can study a history-event or a literary text in isolation. To them, historical events are like the leaves of a tree. They all belong to the same origin but they can be studied independently and each can be related to the present, as Ankersmit puts it out:

Compare history to a tree... the choice no longer falls on the trunk or on the branches, but on the leaves that they are relatively loosely attached to the tree and when autumn or winter comes, they are blown away by the wind.... What remains now... is to gather the leaves that have been blown away and to study them independently of their origins. This means that our historical consciousness has been turned inside out. When we collect the leaves of the past what is important is no longer the place they had on the tree, but the pattern we can form from them now, the way in which this pattern can be adapted to other forms of civilization existing now. (150)

New historicist critics do not focus on relating historical events to one another neither do they focus on trying to investigate the authenticity of a certain historical story. To them, historical events are loosely connected. Studying how the incidents took place is more important than knowing where a certain incident is located in history. Each historical event is an independent event that has its unique factors which shaped it.