The new historicism approach, a method of teaching literature that has been widely gaining popularity in colleges for the last couple of decades, proposes that readers can best interpret a poem through its historical significance. Teaching students about the time period of the poem's publication, artistic movements contemporary to the poem and any social or economic developments that might have influenced the poem give clues as to the purpose and meaning of the poem. In other words, they help students get a grasp on a poem. Teaching with the new historicism method entails an instructor either giving a socio-historical lesson on the poem, or having students research the social and historical background for themselves. Assignments can require students to critically analyze a poem in a persuasive essay through a new historicism lens.
The isolation approach to teaching poetry more or less ignores a poem's historical or social significance. Instead, with this method educators teach students how to evaluate a poem for its intrinsic value. Students learn the function of literary devices, such as irony, metaphor and alliteration, locate them in a poem and examine their effects on the poem. The isolation method proposes that the more complex a poem is, that is, the more literary devices it effectively employs, the more value it has. Teachers also use the isolation approach to encourage students to assess a poem for its value to them personally. In other words, if a poem helps a reader cope with grief or illustrates an idea or image in a particularly helpful or aesthetically pleasing way, then that poem has value for that reader. With this approach, teachers typically assign students either essays that study the role of literary devices in a poem or personal responses to poems that involve explaining why a student likes a poem and why it is important to her.
College professors often use new historicism when teaching poetry in upper years, as students at this level are expected to become experts in the various literary periods, such as the Victorian Era or Modernism, for example. Usually, first year college literature courses are introductory and only focus on interpreting poems through form and literary devices. Elementary, middle and high school English teachers, excepting of the 12th grade, do not usually focus on the historical and social influences on a poem, partly because studying a poem in isolation is somewhat less complicated. However, teachers can use these two approaches in tandem. After learning the historical background of a poem, students can also determine a poem's value to themselves. This kind of combinatory approach is appropriate for high school.
The new historicism approach obviously involves research, either on the part of the teacher or student. If students research, teachers will need to teach them proper research methods and what appropriate sources are, as well as proper citation style. New historicism, although a more involved approach, because it provides a context for a poem's meaning, it gives a reader something to stand on. (See Reference 3, p. 6) Modernist poetry, such as that by T.S. Eliot, for example, is almost inaccessible without some explanation of the Modernist literary movement and what historical developments it was reacting to. Teachers of elementary and middle school can easily teach simple poetry to their students without considering its context.