Herman Paul 
Hayden White [PDF ebook] 

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.