Soru

New Criticism, dominant in the mid-twentieth-century American academy, championed the "autonomy of the text." It argued that a literary work should be evaluated solely on its internal structures, ambiguities, and formal elements, strictly divorced from the author's biography or historical context. In sharp contrast, New Historicism, which gained prominence in the 1980s, posits that a literary text is inextricably embedded within the material and cultural discourses of its time. Rather than viewing literature as a passive reflection of a stable historical background, New Historicists argue for a dynamic, reciprocal relationship: literature both shapes and is shaped by the power structures and ideological conflicts of its era.

A key methodological innovation of New Historicism is the practice of reading canonical literary works alongside seemingly marginal, non-literary texts from the same period—such as legal documents, medical treatises, or colonial records. By treating these diverse texts as equally participating in a shared "poetics of culture," New Historicists attempt to uncover the underlying assumptions and power dynamics that pervaded the society. For example, a New Historicist analysis of a Renaissance play might read it in conjunction with contemporary colonial charters, arguing that the play does not merely reflect early modern anxieties about the New World, but actively participates in constructing the discourse of colonialism.

However, this methodology has faced criticism from multiple academic factions. Traditionalists accuse New Historicism of reducing literature to a mere historical artifact, thereby stripping it of its unique aesthetic value and imaginative transcendence. Meanwhile, some Marxist critics, while highly sympathetic to the focus on historical and material context, argue that New Historicism's reliance on the concept of ubiquitous, inescapable power structures ultimately produces a pessimistic, deterministic view of history. According to these Marxist critics, if power is truly omnipresent and inevitably co-opts all forms of rebellion, then the genuine subversive potential of literature is entirely neutralized.

Based on the passage, the Marxist critics mentioned in the third paragraph would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements regarding literature?