A. E. B. COLDIRON

                                        TOWARD A COMPARATIVE NEW HISTORICISM  
                                        LAND TENURES AND SOME FIFTEENTH CENTURY POEMS

This essay questions the applicability of modern mononational-monolingual critical assumptions to older, polyglot,
international literary cultures. Monolingual critical assumptions are inherently anachronistic; if we “always historicize” in only one language or literary tradition, we tacitly accept nationalized canonical structures developed several centuries after the creation of the literature under study. This essay analyzes several fifteenth-century poems with versions in French, English, and Latin. Because the same metaphors (of land tenancy, here) necessarily rely on different referential and factual backgrounds in the different cultures, the ostensibly analogous versions mean very different things, interpretively and theoretically, in the three languages. It would be impossible to historicize such poems well without considering their respective languages, the distinct legal and political contexts of each, and the separate literary traditions in which they stand. The essay demonstrates and advocates a critical approach that joins historicist and comparatist methods.