Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse.

Abstract

Preface The Postmodernist Challenge Interdisciplinary Challenges Debating the Implications A Problematic Defense Texts and Contexts Clio at the Crossroads Narratives and Historicization The Paradigm of Normal History Contextualism as a Methodology The Multiple Roles of Narrativization Great Stories and the Search for a Larger Context Historical Representations and Truthfulness Interpretations and Historical Realism The Fallacy of a Single Right or Best Interpretation The Insufficiency of Facts Representation and Referentiality as Interpretive Structures The Role of Meta-Understanding History versus Fiction Contrasting Views of History as a Text Interpretation, Metahistory, and Truthfulness The New Rhetoric, Poetics, and Criticism Toward Historical Criticism A Formal Taxonomy of Textual Analysis Beyond Style The New Rhetoric of History A New Poetics of Historical Criticism Emplotment: Historicizing Time The Time of Normal History Textual or Discourse Time versus Chronological Time History versus Chronology: The Problem of Patterning The Nature and Uses of Emplotment Beginnings, Middles, and Endings Emplotment as Meaning and Lesson Toward a Poetics of Emplotment Narrativity and the Great Past Partiality as Voice and Viewpoint The Problems of Partiality The Historian in the Text Voice and Viewpoint Representing Multiple Viewpoints and Voices New Viewpoints on History Changing the Representation of Otherness The Question of Representativeness Multiculturalism and Normal History The Reorientation of Anthropology Toward a Dialogic Ideal Politics and Paradigms The Politics of Historical Practice The Politics of Viewpoint Foundations of Authority The Politics of Paradigms The Politics of the Medium versus the Message Reflexive (Con)Textualization A Basic Guide Theories, Models, Images Toward New Historicizations Transforming Historical Practice Notes Acknowledgments Index