Nová historie a kontext americké literární vědy

The article considers the relation between the ideas of the New History and other concepts of contemporary American literary studies, in particular deconstruction. It also considers the connection between the thinking of the New Historians and literary history, concluding that the New History can bring about important changes in traditional concepts of literary historical thought. Despite the marked differences between deconstruction and the New History, the article points out a number of features common to both, features that these apparently incompatible models often place side by side, particularly the shared mistrust of the reliability of beauty and lack of faith in the explicatable unity of the human universe.