MEANING
1. An approach that explains ideas, values, or institutions through the historical conditions in which they developed.
2. The view that historical events follow laws or patterns that determine social and cultural development.
3. Reliance on earlier styles, precedents, or institutions as models for present practice.
Use it for
interpreting a text within its own historical setting; explaining institutions through their development over time; questioning judgments that ignore differences between periods; contrasting historical understanding with timeless explanationSeparates historical-context interpretation, historical-law theories, and reliance on past models, which should not be treated as identical positions. Writing functions: Theory / Conceptual Language, Analysis / Interpretation, Comparison / Contrast.
Words that belong together
- literary historicism
- a form of historicism
- historicism in interpretation
On the page
Her historicism situates the poem’s moral vocabulary within the controversies of its own decade.
This form of historicism treats political concepts as products of particular historical circumstances.
The argument rejects historicism when it turns a recurring pattern into a claim of inevitable political change.
Her critique of historicism asks whether contingent choices can be reduced to historical laws.
The station’s historicism combined medieval arches with a thoroughly modern iron roof.
Word forms
- Base
- historicism
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Usage notes
Usually an uncountable noun. Plural historicisms is possible when comparing distinct doctrines or approaches. Also historism, an alternate form, not a separate entry. Register: academic. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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