This new book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White’s thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White’s core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present. Starting with White’s medievalist research and youthful fascination for French existentialism, Paul shows how White became increasingly convinced that historical writing is a moral activity. He goes on to argue that the critical concepts that have secured White’s fame – trope, plot, discourse, figural realism – all stem from his desire to explicate the moral claims and perceptions underlying historical writing. White emerges as a passionate thinker, a restless rebel against scientism, and a defender of existentialist humanist values.
This innovative introduction will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities, and help develop a critical understanding of an increasingly important thinker.
Table des matières
Acknowledgments.
Introduction: How to Read Hayden White.
White’s Achievement.
White’s Reputation.
White’s Questions.
Reinterpreting White.
Structure of the Book.
1. Humanist Historicism: The Italian White.
The Papal Schism of 1130.
White’s Covering Law Model.
‘Ideology’ or ‘Value Orientation’.
The Disenchantment of the World.
From Historicism to Sociology.
A Croce Partisan.
Questions In/About History.
2. Liberation Historiography: The Politics of
History.
Why History?
Choosing a Past.
Strong Humanist Father Figures.
Social Conditions of Freedom.
In Defense of Metahistory.
A Philosophy of Liberation.
3. The Historical Imagination: Four Modes of Realism.
An Inverted Disciplinary History.
Escaping the Ironist’s Cage.
Imagination: Thinking and Dreaming.
A Manual of Tropology.
Structuralist Linguistics.
The Freedom of Imagination.
White’s Linguistic Turn.
4. The Power of Discourse: White’s Structuralist
Adventure.
Three Modes of Comprehension.
Figurative Language.
Fictions of Factual Representation.
Objectivism and Relativism.
The Prison-House of Language.
Getting Out of History.
5. Masks of Meaning: Facing the Sublime.
The Content of the Form.
Stories Are Not Lived But Told.
Sublime Historical Reality.
The Specter of Fascism.
Modernist Anti-Narrativism.
6. Figuring History: The Modernist White.
Modernist Events.
Intransitive Writing.
A Turning Point?
Figural Realism.
The Practical Past.
Epilogue.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index.
A propos de l’auteur
Herman Paul is lecturer in historical theory at Leiden University.
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