This being the second entry in Alex's Star Wars Literature Meme Archive

When you feel woefully underprepared after missing class on New Historicism and have to wing it for the blog post

Prequel memes are here to stay everybody. Brush up

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrequelMemes/comments/8129f3/when_you_realize_the_entire_prequel_trilogy/

In my brief exposure to New Historicism, I was struck by a couple things, one of which was this quotation from Sassoon's "Repression of War Experience":

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;

What silly beggars they are to blunder in

And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—

No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war,

When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;

I love everything about it—the transition from the mundane to the glorified in the unsteady narrator's mind is incredibly poetic.

Another thing that struck me is how how much effort New Historicism requires. If any critical approach were to be considered a science, it shouldn't be New Criticism, it should be New Historicism, with its critics and scholars compiling data (co-texts) to deduce meanings from literature. But alas, this is quotes and questions week, not paragraph week.

I can't help but wonder if New Historicism is applicable in the present. Can we utilize this lens to better understand modern texts, whether fictional or non-fictional prose, or poetry? Or does New Historicism only work to offer salience to older texts? I think it is tempting to assume clarity of mind and thought in understanding a work of modern literature and its co-texts, but it may not be entirely possible.