The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation - Hardcover

White, Professor Hayden

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801829372 ISBN 13: 9780801829376

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987

Synopsis

"[White] has clearly made significant advances in laying a foundation for a better understanding of the intricate interaction between narrative representation and what it purports to represent in both history and literature."--American Historical Review.

About this title

About the Author

Hayden White is professor of the history of consciousness and Presidential Professor of Historical Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the author of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, both available from Johns Hopkins University Press.

Reviews

Here, White continues and extends the influential analysis of historical writing he began in Metahistory (1974) . He rejects the idea that history reports the past as it actually happened; narrative proceeds according to its own rules, and to use it is to adopt a certain conception of how events are organized. This conception arises not from the "facts" of history but from the nature of narrative: the "content of the form." White sees history as akin to fiction in its methods and tasks, and though he does not adequately address the status of his own workis what he writes intended to be true in a stronger sense than he allows his subjects?this is a provocative work certain to be widely read by historians, philosophers, and literary theorists. David Gordon, Social Philosophy & Policy Ctr., Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801829372
• ISBN 13: 9780801829376
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 264