Returning to History through Form

This paper is to explore the idea of historical criticism that aims to return to social reality through various cultural forms. This new historical trend in criticism never abandons the achievements made by formalism in the first half of the century; on the contrary, it refers to the current interpretation of literature as medium, by which the understanding of reality is made possible. The paper investigates the challenge of socio\|historical criticisms represented by Cultural Materialism in Britain and the New Historicism in Renaissance studies in the United States.