Beyond the great story : history as text and discourse /
Berkofer, Robert F.
Beyond the great story : history as text and discourse / Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. - Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard U.P, 1995. - xii, 381 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Reprint. Originally published: 1995.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-366) and index.
The postmodernist challenge -- Narratives and historicization -- Historical representations and truthfulness -- The new rhetoric, poetics, and criticism -- Emplotment : historicizing time -- Partiality as voice and viewpoint -- Representing multiple viewpoints and voices -- Politics and paradigms -- Reflexive (con)textualization.
What legitimate form can history take when faced by the severe challenges issued in recent years by literary, rhetorical, multiculturalist, and feminist theories? That is the question considered in this long-awaited and pathbreaking book. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., addresses the essential practical concern of contemporary historians; he offers a way actually to go about reading and writing histories in light of the many contesting theories. Berkhofer ranges through a vast archive of recent writings by a broad range of authors. He explicates the opposing paradigms and their corresponding dilemmas by presenting in dialogue form the positions of modernists and postmodernists, formalists and deconstructionists, textualists and contextualists. Poststructuralism, the New Historicism, the New Anthropology, the New Philosophy of History - these and many other approaches are illuminated in new ways in these comprehensive, interdisciplinary explorations. From them, Berkhofer arrives at a clear vision of the forms historical discourse might take, advocates a new approach to historical criticism, and proposes new forms of historical representation that encompass multiculturalism, poetics, and reflexive (con)textualization. He elegantly blends traditional and new methodology; assesses what the "revival of the narrative" actually entails; considers the politics of disciplinary frameworks; and derives coherent new approaches to writing, teaching, reviewing, and reading histories.--Front flap of dustjacket.
0674069080 9780674069084
Historiography
History - Philosophy
901
Beyond the great story : history as text and discourse / Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. - Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard U.P, 1995. - xii, 381 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Reprint. Originally published: 1995.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-366) and index.
The postmodernist challenge -- Narratives and historicization -- Historical representations and truthfulness -- The new rhetoric, poetics, and criticism -- Emplotment : historicizing time -- Partiality as voice and viewpoint -- Representing multiple viewpoints and voices -- Politics and paradigms -- Reflexive (con)textualization.
What legitimate form can history take when faced by the severe challenges issued in recent years by literary, rhetorical, multiculturalist, and feminist theories? That is the question considered in this long-awaited and pathbreaking book. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., addresses the essential practical concern of contemporary historians; he offers a way actually to go about reading and writing histories in light of the many contesting theories. Berkhofer ranges through a vast archive of recent writings by a broad range of authors. He explicates the opposing paradigms and their corresponding dilemmas by presenting in dialogue form the positions of modernists and postmodernists, formalists and deconstructionists, textualists and contextualists. Poststructuralism, the New Historicism, the New Anthropology, the New Philosophy of History - these and many other approaches are illuminated in new ways in these comprehensive, interdisciplinary explorations. From them, Berkhofer arrives at a clear vision of the forms historical discourse might take, advocates a new approach to historical criticism, and proposes new forms of historical representation that encompass multiculturalism, poetics, and reflexive (con)textualization. He elegantly blends traditional and new methodology; assesses what the "revival of the narrative" actually entails; considers the politics of disciplinary frameworks; and derives coherent new approaches to writing, teaching, reviewing, and reading histories.--Front flap of dustjacket.
0674069080 9780674069084
Historiography
History - Philosophy
901