The Archaeology of Knowledge (French: L'Archologie du Savoir) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1969.

Theme: Any text must be free from any preconceived ideas. No specific model should be followed which can make them blind. We shall find corelations but that must not be done by blinding prejudices. While interpreting any text, we should be innovative. The desired goal of Foucault is- to treat discourse as practices. This practice will not be a group of signs/language/ speech. There must be non-specificity, a kind of indeterminacy. We should be open-minded and all the possibilities of interpretation should be there. DISCOURSE: The term discourse has several definitions. In the study of language, discourse often refers to the speech patterns and usage of language, dialects, and acceptable statements, within a community. It is a subject of study in peoples who live in secluded areas and share similar speech conventions. STATEMENT: Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement", the basic unit of discourse that he believes has been ignored up to this point. "Statement" is the English translation from French nonc (that which is enunciated or expressed), which has a peculiar meaning for Foucault. "nonc" for Foucault means that which makes propositions, utterances, or speech acts meaningful. In this understanding, statements themselves are not propositions, utterances, or speech acts. Rather, statements create a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and it is these rules that are the preconditions for propositions (assumption, that may be true or false), utterances (a complete unit of speech in spoken language), or speech acts (utterances that must involve an action. For ex, Close the door is a Speech Act but he is a good boy is not a Speech Act.)to have meaning. Depending on whether or not they comply with the rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and inversely, an incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse. It is towards huge entities of statements, called discursive formations, that Foucault aims his analysis. TEXT- PART 1: Para 1 and 2:Foucault is trying to present his position about some present ideas and thoughts. For example- tradition- which is a sumtotal of some beliefs, ideas thoughts, attitudes, etc. Tradition is useful as you can decide which is good or bad. It is a kind of belief for certain ideology. We must examine and re-examine our established norms and values- the things offered to us. We must not blindly accept the syntheses offered by the power circle of tradition. Para 3: We must question and analyze the factors behind each grouping and dIvision. DIvisions and groupings are facts of discourse that need to be analyzed and reanalyzed. Para 4: Generalization with a view to unifying something must be suspended. For example, book and aeuvre (complete works or omnibus or collection of a particular author). We have a tendency to find out unity in particular authors all works. Each book of that author is materially (from the point of view of subject matter) individualized but when the unity is to be sought in the aeuvre, isnt the material unity becomes a weak one? Here the material unity is based on the discursive unity. ( Hamlet and King Lear are individualized. But the discursive unity is the theme of mans essential

loneliness. Hamlet and As You Like It is tragedy and comedy and they are also individualized. But Shakespeares omnibus highlight the unity of universal human appeal which is sought discursively.) In fact, unity itself is constructed upon a complex field of discourse. Para 5: Once the unity of any group is suspended, the entire field is set free for more discourses. Foucault says we should not consider things or issues only on the basis of homogeneity. Rather, we should try to find out something new, distinguishing, discursive which obviates the base of similarity. Para 6: We should rediscover beyond the intention of the authors message, his statements. We must reconstitute another discourse, rediscover what is hidden in his message: We do not seek below what is manifest, the half silent murmur of another discourse. We must decide the specific existence of a statement. Para 7: We must ask ourselves what is the purpose of suspending all the accepted unities. The thing is, we cannot confine ourselves to any fixed idea. Rather, we should be open-minded to all sorts of criticisms, reviews regarding any statement. Para 8: If we isolate the occurrence of the statement or event, we do it only with a view to grasping other forms of regularity, other types of relations- relations between statements, relations between groups of statements, relations between statements and group of statements and groups of statements and events of a quite different kind. Para 9: By freeing discourses of all the groupings, one is able to describe other unities by means of a group of controlled decisions. ( The three purposes of facts of discourse are: 1. It can give you new ideas, concepts. 2. It can lead you to further discourses. 3. All the unities of any statement/text/discourse can be described categorically) Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse would appear to lead Foucault toward Structuralism. However, whereas structuralists search for homogeneity in a discursive entity, Foucault focuses on differences that tend his theory to be sounding Postsructiralism. Also he is deeply concerned with New Historicism. Foucault wants discourses to be never ending. Discourses will lead to debates, arguments-an ever flowing source of further discourses, statements that will lead to discursive formation. That discursive formation will enrich all other branches of knowledge depending on necessity. Its utility can be seen in the case of New Historicism.

NEW HISTORICISM: New Historicism is a theory applied to literature that suggests literature must be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic. The theory arose in the 1980s, and with Stephen Greenblatt as its main proponent, became quite popular in the 1990s. Unlike previous historical criticism, which limited itself to simply demonstrating how a work was reflective of its time, New Historicism evaluates how the work is influenced by the time in which it was produced. It also examines the social sphere in which the author moved, the psychological background of the author, the books and theories that may have influenced the author, and any other factors which influenced the work of art. All work is biased. Its main focus is to look at things outside of the work, instead of reading the text as a thing apart from the author.

LOUIS MONTROSE: Louis Adrian Montrose is an American literary theorist and academic scholar. His scholarship has addressed a wide variety of literary, historical, and theoretical topics and issues, and has significantly shaped contemporary studies of Renaissance poetics, English Renaissance theatre and Elizabeth I. (The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era"). Montrose was an influential early proponent of New Historicism, especially as it applied to the study of early modern English literature and culture. He is currently Professor of English Literature at the University of California, San Diego. In Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture, Louis Montrose examines and defines New Historicism and the ideologies that form the lifeblood of the theory. He states that New Historicism examines similarities between the social infrastructurei.e. history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class, and genderand language. Language, explains Louis, is limited in power and is a cultural construct similar to the social infrastructure. He goes on to explain that New Historicism, like the subject it studies, is not impervious to subjectivity, and New Historicists interpretations are shaped by culture and bias will always be present. Also, a canonical work itself is not the subject of study for the practitioner of this theory. Instead, the time frame and cultural happenings of the period are topics of scrutiny; culture is a text to be interpreted, a collection of stories. New Historicism considers works of literature as historical texts. New Historicism suggests a subjective approach to literature and was practiced mostly in Renaissance studies. According to new historicism, identity is fashioned by social institutions. Literature is another form of social construct, which is produced by the society and in return is active in reshaping the culture of that society. Montrose defines two key terms in his discussion of New Historicism: the Historicity of Texts and the Textuality of History. The Historicity of Texts concerns the written word: all models of writing are influenced by cultural and social stimuli. This not only includes the texts studied (or, rather, events in history) but also the way in which said texts are studied (in other words, the methods used by the practitioner). The Textuality of History, on the other hand, states that (due to subjectivity or bias) there is no access to a full and genuinely authentic past. Because of this, the work historians produceseeing as they are utilizing unauthentic documentation on which to base their workis not only to an extent fraudulent by default, but it also perpetuates the problem of un-authenticity for future examiners. In the end, Montrose states, the best one can do is realize that by the mere practice of analyzing the interplay of culture and history, one is adding to and participating in the very thing he is analyzing. (According to Jeffrey N. Cox and Larry J.Reynolds, "new" historicism can be differentiated from "old" historicism "by its lack of faith in 'objectivity' and 'permanence' and its stress not upon the direct recreation of the past, but rather the process by which the past is constructed or invented")