Overthinking History Makes Perrin Question its Reality

            In the world of literary criticism, the advent of New Criticism, a movement devoted to letting the texts speak for themselves (rather than allow context to get in the way of meaning) sent far reaching ripples through American academia.  Of course, New Criticism was a movement within the world of fiction, but it seems that Heimert has taken this idea to the extreme, completely eschewing authorial intent when analyzing texts. Mead mocks him when he notes that Heimert wrote “whether the enlightened sage of Monticello [Jefferson] knew it or not, he had inherited the mantle of George Whitefield.” (emphasis added) Mead and Morgan take issue with Heimert’s “fantasy” constructed out of his reading between the lines. The excerpts we receive seem to imply that Heimert thinks he knows better the motivations behind historical texts than the authors themselves. This of course is a damning accusation, but, as a modern historian, doesn’t he?

            Don’t historians have the benefit of hindsight? Don’t historians have the benefit of more knowledge and access to information? As fantastic as Heimert’s hypothesis seems, do we owe more credit to the historian than to the authors of historical text? Certainly there have been authors who do not know what they mean, or where they lie intellectually, at the time of their writing. Furthermore, if a generation of historians read a meaning that was never there, doesn’t that bring the meaning into existence? If our culture of history is reacting to a certain reading of historical events (anything from frontier theory to "Metamora,") regardless of the "historicity", surely that meaning has resonated and affected our current reality.