How Not to Historicise a Poem: On McGann's ‘Light Brigade’

Abstract

While earlier forms of historical literary criticism treated history broadly as background or context, the early 1980s saw the development of new types of historicising criticism that aimed or claimed to penetrate to the very quick of lived historical experience, as this was mediated by literary texts. In this essay, I focus on Jerome McGann's New Historicist reading of Tennyson's ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ as an exemplary reading of its sort. I do so in order to explore how problematic McGann's claims are, and how they can serve a useful pedagogical function at present. My essay will circulate around the question of just what the Light Brigade was in reality, what it would have represented, and how it is represented in the poem, considered in relation to the reality and perception of class at the time.