Reddit reviews Literary Criticism

For a post about methodological historicism, the terms people are throwing out in response could sure use some more careful historicizing. Personally, I would call the two methods you describe "historicizing" and "strategic" or "interested" forms of reading.

Given your question, you may be interested in the work of Joseph North. His recent (and controversial) book Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History draws a broad distinction between two modes of reading: scholarship and criticism. Where that distinction gets interesting for you is when he starts characterizing the former:

>“We might call this the “historicist/contextualist” paradigm, by which I simply mean that almost all of the most influential movements in literary studies since the 1980s [i.e., since the rise of what u/drjeffy rightly calls New Historicism] have proceeded on the assumption that, for academic purposes, works of literature are chiefly of interest as diagnostic instruments for determining the state of the cultures in which they were written or read”

That looks to me a lot like what you're describing in scenario one. I'm less sure that you and he mean the same thing about scenario two, but the overlap is worth exploring if you're curious.