What is a Classic in History?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Jaume Aurell
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Narrative Language

Abstract What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic.

Arab Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef M. Choueiri
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Arabic World

This chapter traces the principal historiographical developments in the Arab world since 1945. It is divided into two major parts. The first part deals with the period extending from 1945 to 1970. During this period the discourse of either socialism or nationalism permeated most historical writings. The second part presents the various attempts made to decolonize, rewrite, or theorize history throughout the Arab world. The chapter then shows how in the various states of the Arabic world—some but not all of which have become fundamentalist Islamic regimes—Western models continued to be followed, though often with a more explicitly socialist approach than would be the case in America or Western Europe. By the 1970s, well before the shake-up of radical Islamicization that has dominated the past quarter-century, the entire Arabic world began to push hard against the dominance of residual Western colonial history.

scholarly journals Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the structure of a historical text

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Grigory Ivanovich Gerasimov ◽  
Andrei Vladimirovich Gerasimov
Keyword(s):  
Cluster Analysis ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Comparison Analysis ◽  
Main Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Methods

The subject of this research is the historical writing technique, which allows creating convincing images of the past. The goal of this article is ti analyze the structure of texts written by the historians and covering the period from antiquity to the XXI century. The theoretical framework consists of the idealistic approach towards history developed by the author. This article is first to examine the structure of texts written by the prominent historians of the past, such as Herodotus, Nestor, Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, and some historians of the XX – XX centuries from the perspective of idealistic approach and the use of quantitative methods. For comparison, analysis is conducted on the literary texts of A. S. Pushkin and V. S. Pikul dedicated to historical themes. The article employs content analysis, structural analysis, and terarchical cluster analysis of the texts on the basis of their structure. This revealed that the structure of these texts consists of the factual and theoretical statements, where the firs prevailed until the mid XX century. The use of cluster analysis allowed building a matrix of similarity of the works. The main method of creating convincing historical text lies in selection and interpretation of the the facts in accordance with the dominant worldview or a widespread historical concept. Facts are subordinated to the theory and confirm the fundamental ideas and historical concepts, as well as depict a convincing image of the past. The conducted analysis indicates that theory plays the key role in creating a convincing historical text, while facts are secondary; no significant impact of historical methods is revealed. The major difference between the analyzed historical and literary texts consists in the fact that there is no theory in the literary works.

scholarly journals FORUM: CLOSENESS AND DISTANCE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT INTRODUCTION

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BREWER ◽  
SILVIA SEBASTIANI
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

According to Michel de Certeau, distance is the indispensable prerequisite for historical knowledge and the very characteristic of modern historiography. The historian speaks, in the present, about the absent, the dead, as Certeau labels the past, thus emphasizing the performative dimension of historical writing: “the function of language is to introduce through saying what can no longer be done.” As a consequence, the heterogeneity of two non-communicating temporalities becomes the challenge to be faced: the present of the historian, as a moment du savoir, is radically separated from the past, which exists only as an objet de savoir, the meaning of which can be restored by an operation of distantiation and contextualization. In Evidence de l’histoire: Ce que voient les historiens, François Hartog takes up the question of history writing and what is visible, or more precisely the modalities historians have employed to narrate the past, opening up the way to a reflection on the boundaries between the visible and the invisible: the mechanisms that have contributed to establish these boundaries over time, and the questions that have legitimized the survey of what has been seen or not seen. But, as Mark Phillips points out, it is the very ubiquity of the trope of distance in historical writings that has paradoxically rendered it almost invisible to historians, so that “it has become difficult to distinguish between the concept of historical distance and the idea of history itself.”

On Interpreting Historical Texts and Contributing to Current Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Marcel van Ackeren
Keyword(s):  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text

The chapter discusses four aspects of the question of how we have to interpret historical text in order to make a contribution to current philosophy. It first argues against the dialogue approach, according to which philosophers of the past can be our interlocutors and our interpretations of their texts are dialogues with them. Second, it criticises the Rorschach approach for claiming that our interpretations of the historical texts do not have to be faithful representations of the texts. Third, it is possible that historical text and our current debates concern identical questions but that we should not presuppose transhistorical identity, for there is too much change. Fourth, three types of contexts are distinguished and it is argued that referring to them might enhance the interpretation of the arguments in the texts.

scholarly journals Research on Middle School History Teaching based on the Cultivation of Core Literacy of Space-Time Concept

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Experience Teaching ◽  
School History ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Middle School History ◽  
Core Literacy

Experience is a kind of knowledge and understanding of value, the discovery and sublimation of the meaning of experience. The most important thing of effective history teaching is to develop and improve students’ emotions, attitudes and values; experience is the premise, carrier and destination of developing and improving students’ emotions, attitudes and values. Experience teaching is an ideal choice for effective teaching of history. History is people’s knowledge and understanding of the past facts; historical text is the existence form of history. In essence, historical experience teaching is a dialogue between students and historical texts across time and space. Building a bridge for dialogue is the strategy of historical experience teaching.

scholarly journals Interpreting and Explaining Historical Texts – Is it Possible?

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenche Vagle
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Correlation Model ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structural Correlation ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Context Models ◽  
Text Context

Abstract With reference to particular problems of interpretations that radio listeners of today are likely to encounter when listening to a Norwegian radio reportage from the 1930s, this article discusses the question of whether it is possible for present-day readers/viewers/ listeners or text analysts to understand texts from the past in the way that they were originally meant to be understood. It is argued that we need to gain some kind of access to the contexts that once engendered the texts if we are to arrive at historically acceptable interpretations and explanations of them. The article suggests a solution to the problem of historical text analysis, namely historical context reconstruction. This solution is concretised in terms of a specific methodology, which has here been used for research on the formation and first development of the genre system of Norwegian radio. This methodology involves the application of three different text-context models for discourse-analytical purposes: 1. Halliday’s structural correlation model 2. The multistratal realisation model developed within social semiotics 3. Goffman’s frame model.

Histories (shi史)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stepphen Durrant
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Government Bureaucracy ◽  
Chinese Historiography ◽  
The Government ◽  
Canonical Texts

The Chinese tradition of historical writing is rich and complex. That tradition is outlined here from its earliest appearance in such canonical texts as Shangshu, Chunqiu, and Zuozhuan down to the establishment of the Tang Bureau of History in 629 and the completion of Liu Zhiji’s masterful book-length study of Chinese historiography in 710, a text that provides much of the framework for the discussion. The chapter explores such issues as the tension throughout this period between official historical writing, sponsored by the ruler and sometimes sustained by the government bureaucracy, and historical texts produced by private parties; the search for appropriate forms to recount the past; and the boundaries of “histories” in early Chinese systems of bibliographic classification.

Ale na razie tu cisza” – fotografie sprzed katastrofy w wybranych zapisach literackich (Stefan Chwin, Ryszard Kapuściński, Wisława Szymborska)

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Magdalena Strąk
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
Terrorist Attack ◽  
First World War ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

The work aims to show a peculiar perspective of looking at photographs taken on the eve of the broadly understood disaster, which is specified in a slightly different way in each of the literary texts (Stefan Chwin’s autobiographical novel Krótka historia pewnego żartu [The brief history of a certain joke], a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński Na wystawie „Fotografia chłopów polskich do 1944 r.” [At an exhibition “The Polish peasants in photographs to 1944”] and Wisława Szymborska’s Fotografia z 11 września [Photograph from September 11]) – as death in a concentration camp, a general concept of the First World War or a terrorist attack. Upcoming tragic events – of which the photographed people are not yet aware – become for the subsequent recipient an inseparable element of reality contained in the frame. For the later observers, privileged with time perspective, the characters captured in the photograph are already victims of the catastrophe, which in reality was not yet recorded by the camera. It is a work about coexistence of the past and future in the field of photography.

RUNTUHNYA KHILAFAH TURKI UTSMANI 3 MARET 1924

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miftahul Jannah
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Republic Of Turkey

<p align="center"><strong>Abstrak</strong></p><p>Tulisan dalam jurnal ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui proses runtuhnya Khilafah Turki Ustmani tanggal 3 maret 1924 dan dampaknya terhadap kehidupan umat Islam. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode sejarah. Metode sejarah adalah prosedur sejarawan Untuk melukiskan kisah masa lampau berdasarkan jejak-jejak yang ditinggalkan pada masa lampau dengan langkah-langkah penulisan sejarah sebagai berikut: (1) heuristik, (2) kritik, (3) interpretasi dan (4) historiografi. Berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan maka dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa: Khilafah Turki Ustmani dihancurkan dengan cara menghapus sistem kekhilafahan dan menggantinya dengan sistem republik oleh seorang keturunan yahudi yaitu Mustafa Kemal Attatur. Selama 14 abad kaum muslimin hidup dalam pemerintahan Islam yang mana diterapkan hukum-hukum Islam dalam seluruh aspek kehidupan. Namun sayangnya hari itu tepatnya 3 maret 1924 secara resmi dengan bantuan Inggris, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk mengubah khilafah dengan sistem Repulik Turki dan sampai hari ini sistem tersebut masih berjalan. Runtuhnya khilafah menyebabkan munculnya persoalan kaum muslimin mulai dari kolonialisme, konflik di Negara dunia ketiga, persoalan ekonomi,politik dan sosial budaya.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Kata Kunci:</strong> Khilafah Turki Ustmani, 3 maret 1924</p><p> </p><p align="center"><strong><em>Abstract</em></strong></p><p><em>The writing in this journal aims to find out the process of the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3, 1924 and its impact on the lives of Muslims. The method used in this study is the historical method. Historical method is the procedure of historians to describe the story of the past based on traces left in the past by the steps of historical writing as follows: (1) heuristics, (2) criticism, (3) interpretation and (4) historiography.</em></p><p><em>Based on the research conducted, it can be concluded that: the Ottoman Caliphate was destroyed by removing the Caliphate system and replacing it with a republic system by a descendant of the Jews namely Mustafa Kemal Attatur. For 14 centuries the Muslims lived in an Islamic government which applied Islamic laws in all aspects of life. But unfortunately that day to be exact 3 March 1924 officially with the help of Britain, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk changed the Caliphate with the system of the Republic of Turkey and to this day the system is still running. The collapse of the Caliphate caused the emergence of problems of the Muslims ranging from colonialism, conflict in third world countries, economic, political and socio-cultural issues</em><em>.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><strong><em>Keywords:</em></strong><em> the Caliphate of Turkish Ottoman, March 3, 1924</em>

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