New Historicist Aspects in Manto’s Stories Fouzia Abid * & Hammad Mushtaq ** ABSTRACT: The topic of this research is ‘New Historicist Aspects in Manto’s Stories’. New historicism integrates both literary and historical texts without discrimination and gives equal importance to both texts. New historicism upholds that the individuals and society or culture are mutually formative and shape each other. New historicism focuses on power structures, ways of interpretation and representations, and issues of identity and how these are fashioned. The present research seeks to analyze selected new historicist aspects in Saadat Hassan Manto’s stories from his representative collection: Manto’s World (2000) translated by Khalid Hassan, delimiting itself to the aspects of representation, identity and circulation of power. The stories picked to be analyzed are The Price of Freedom and The Great Divide. Relevant passages of these stories are analyzed to identify afore mentioned aspects. The study reveals that these aspects of new historicism are interwoven and reflected in these stories. The network of powerful creates identities and represent things in a self-serving method. They generate favorable cultural ambiance; in which these representations and identities become part and parcel of people’s awareness; which serves to perpetuate their power. Moreover, Manto through the characters and setting transfers his far-reaching and open-minded vision, contrary to the conventional one. Keywords: Identity, representations, power circulation. * Email: fouziaabid@hotmail.com ** Email: hammad.mushtaq@s3h.nust.edu.pk