Imperfect histories
Imperfect histories: the elusive past and the legacy of romantic historicism Ann Rigney
Publisher: Ithaca, N.Y. ; Cornell University Press, 2001.
ISBN: 0801438616
DDC: 823.0810908
LCC: PR868
Edition: (alk. paper)
Summary:
"Imperfect Histories puts "imperfection" at the heart of a theory of
historical representation. Ann Rigney shows how historical writing
involves dealing with intractable subjects that resist our efforts to
know and to shape them. Those who write history, she says, engage in
an ongoing struggle to match up what they find relevant in the past
with the information and interpretive models at their disposal.
Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of historical practice. This
dissatisfaction is especially evident in the various attempts made
over the last two centuries to write an "alternative" history of
everyday experience." "Focusing on historical writing in the last
decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth, Rigney analyzes a wide range of works by Walter Scott,
Jules Michelet, Augustin Thierry, and Thomas Carlyle. She shows how
the attempt to write an alternative history brought historical
writing into a close yet fraught relationship with literature. The
result is a new account of that relationship as it took shape in the
romantic period and as it continues to influence contemporary
practices."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-203) and index.
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