Chapter 9: Imagination in a Changing World
9.1 Introduction
Literature reflects the world in which it was written, both its material circumstances & the
things that are taken for granted by writers & readers
Imagination is the power to think beyond the self-evident & bring non-existent things into
the realm of the imaginable for others
Contextualist: an interest in the relationship between literature as an aesthetic phenomenon
& the changing contexts in which it is written
9.2 Texts and Cultural Context
9.2.1 Culture and Cultural Borders
The worldliness of a text means the fact that literature always carries the traces of the place
& time in which it was written
To study a text from the perspective of its worldliness is to identify the things to which it is
blind as well as its potential to break through old habits of thought and patterns of
identification
The concept of ‘world’ in worldliness encompasses the material, the social & the cultural
Culture is what allows people to give meaning to their world, coordinate their activities &
share a sense of community
Cultural borders should be seen as a series of thresholds making a gradual decrease in
mutual comprehension and of our ability to coordinate behavior, because of an
accumulation of differences in values, manners & customs
Transculturality opens up a perspective on culture that rejects the idea that the life-worlds of
particular groups are bounded, internally cohesive & linguistically homogeneous spheres; it
emphasizes instead how ideas, values & stories enter into conversation with each other as
people & cultural products move across the world, and how in this process, cultural borders
are renegotiated & the thresholds of mutual understanding relocated
9.2.2 How Cultures Become Different
New historicism has promoted a contextualist approach to literature that studies it in
relation to other cultural practices & forms of knowledge
o Culture works as a system of ‘constraints’: it offers inherited models for how men &
women are expected to pattern their lives & relations
o Culture is also characterized by ‘mobility’: these models are continuously adapted as
they are communicated across different media & practices
o Included an important methodological innovation: an awareness of the importance
of studying literary works in conjunction with other cultural products in circulation at
the time of writing
9.3 How Literature Keeps Changing, and Why
Periodisation: the grouping of cultural products according to the time in which they were
produced
Heuristic device: helps us find patterns in vast amounts of information
Literature responds to changes in the life-world as well as anticipating them
The principle of defamiliarization gave an internal dynamic to literature and to the arts in
general
The alternation between innovation and normalisation can be illustrated by reference to a
Petrarchan sonnet; it became a very popular form of writing love poetry in the early
Renaissance the model became so overused that people started using it in an ironic way
(mock Petrarchan sonnets), which then became a fashion in its own right
9.1 Introduction
Literature reflects the world in which it was written, both its material circumstances & the
things that are taken for granted by writers & readers
Imagination is the power to think beyond the self-evident & bring non-existent things into
the realm of the imaginable for others
Contextualist: an interest in the relationship between literature as an aesthetic phenomenon
& the changing contexts in which it is written
9.2 Texts and Cultural Context
9.2.1 Culture and Cultural Borders
The worldliness of a text means the fact that literature always carries the traces of the place
& time in which it was written
To study a text from the perspective of its worldliness is to identify the things to which it is
blind as well as its potential to break through old habits of thought and patterns of
identification
The concept of ‘world’ in worldliness encompasses the material, the social & the cultural
Culture is what allows people to give meaning to their world, coordinate their activities &
share a sense of community
Cultural borders should be seen as a series of thresholds making a gradual decrease in
mutual comprehension and of our ability to coordinate behavior, because of an
accumulation of differences in values, manners & customs
Transculturality opens up a perspective on culture that rejects the idea that the life-worlds of
particular groups are bounded, internally cohesive & linguistically homogeneous spheres; it
emphasizes instead how ideas, values & stories enter into conversation with each other as
people & cultural products move across the world, and how in this process, cultural borders
are renegotiated & the thresholds of mutual understanding relocated
9.2.2 How Cultures Become Different
New historicism has promoted a contextualist approach to literature that studies it in
relation to other cultural practices & forms of knowledge
o Culture works as a system of ‘constraints’: it offers inherited models for how men &
women are expected to pattern their lives & relations
o Culture is also characterized by ‘mobility’: these models are continuously adapted as
they are communicated across different media & practices
o Included an important methodological innovation: an awareness of the importance
of studying literary works in conjunction with other cultural products in circulation at
the time of writing
9.3 How Literature Keeps Changing, and Why
Periodisation: the grouping of cultural products according to the time in which they were
produced
Heuristic device: helps us find patterns in vast amounts of information
Literature responds to changes in the life-world as well as anticipating them
The principle of defamiliarization gave an internal dynamic to literature and to the arts in
general
The alternation between innovation and normalisation can be illustrated by reference to a
Petrarchan sonnet; it became a very popular form of writing love poetry in the early
Renaissance the model became so overused that people started using it in an ironic way
(mock Petrarchan sonnets), which then became a fashion in its own right
