To which of the following theories New Historicism is indebted?
A) Marxism
B) Formalism
C) Reader-response Theory
D) Existentialism
E) Hermeneutics
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

The correct option is A and C (Marxism and Reader-response Theory).

New Historicism, a school of literary theory that emerged in the 1980s, is heavily indebted to several intellectual and critical movements. Let us break down why Marxism (A) and Reader-response Theory (C) are key contributors to its development:

1. Debts to Marxism (A):
Marxism focuses on how literature and culture are shaped by the material, socio-economic, and political structures of their time. New Historicism inherits this interest in power relations, ideology, and historical contexts. It views literary texts not as isolated aesthetic objects, but as products of the culture and power struggles of the era in which they were produced, similar to Marxist cultural critique.

2. Debts to Reader-response Theory (C):
Reader-response theory argues that a text does not possess a single, objective meaning; instead, meaning is actively constructed by the reader during the act of reading, influenced by the reader's cultural and historical situatedness. New Historicism applies a similar logic to history: it views the historian or critic as a "reader" of historical documents whose own cultural and historical position shapes their interpretation of the past. Thus, history is not an objective set of facts, but an interpreted text.

Other options such as Formalism (B) emphasize the autonomy of the text (which New Historicism rejects in favor of context), and Existentialism (D) focuses on individual freedom and existence rather than the historical and cultural embeddedness of texts.