New Historicism: Interpreting Contexts

. . .In an older historicism, you adduced a context in order to secure the meaning of a work of art. We wanted to say that what was being described as the context, was itself open to interpretation. It was not the stable background. We wanted to have the interpretive struggle shared by what used to be called the background.

Stephen Jay Greenblatt talks about New Historicism, its genesis and future and his current concerns in Cultural Studies.