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The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation by Professor Hayden White

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The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation Professor Hayden White
Language: English
Page: 250
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0801841151, 9780801841156
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press

From Library Journal

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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The publication of The Content of the Form... is an important event. It shows that for a long period White has been unremittingly concerned with a revaluation of the concept of narrative in the contemporary context, and that the various different intellectual stimuli which he has received have all helped to focus his intense study of the subject.

This oeuvre will continue to force us to pay close, careful, rigorous attention to the syntheses he offers, so that anyone who 'reads'—whether fiction, history, biography, autobiography, whatever—needs to have examined the writings of Hayden White.

[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.