Forms of Uncertainty

Rather than prescribe a single method for the study of literature and history, this work illustrates the value of studying the one with an awareness of the other. The essays collected here consider the element of uncertainty inherent in any critical interpretation of historical fact. Best known for his historiography, Levin here covers the work of Nathanial Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, James Baldwin, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Saul Bellow, as well as the Bradfords and Mathers. In his view, historians ought to seek and then try to express, event though they cannot perfectly attain, a just understanding of the past. Limited though our perception and language are, historians and literary scholars have little choice but to strive to see their subject with the clearest possible awareness of its context and their own perspective.