The New Historicism is intriguing because it involves many different forms of criticism throughout its process. Ross C Murfin explains that New Historicism should not be called “new” because it often “work[s] on the border of another school” (124). Instead, this collaboration, I believe, makes New Historicism interesting because it allows the critic to delve into issues often addressed in a Marxist or feminist reading, just to name a few, in regards to the historic context of the topic. New Historicism breaks away from the New Critics because it approaches literature by taking the text’s historic influences into account. Rather viewing history as constant facts presented in a linear pattern, New Historicists recognize history as a reconstruction, one that is greatly influenced by our own perceptions of it. With this in mind, New Historicism studies texts within history but they stay away from defining texts based on some general “Spirit of the Age” that historians have assigned to different time periods. Looking at literature this way presents a new way of studying works in relation to the time period they come from, for they often reflect aspects of life that do not fit in the “Spirit of the Age” that their time period supposedly possessed.