ABSTRACT
New Historicists are sometimes said to be guilty of ‘the principle of arbitrary connectedness’; that is, they conjoin what should by rights be kept apart, gluing together in a zany collage pieces that do not properly belong in the same place. But how do we know what is ‘proper’? Who controls the categories that govern the distinction between the arbitrary and the appropriate? And what exactly are we supposed to see when we look into a mirror?
