The Content of the Form
Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
Published on 26. September 1990
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-0-8018-4115-6 (ISBN)
Description
Hayden White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of meaning - its production, distribution, and consumption-in different historical epochs. In the end, he suggests, the only meaning that history can have is the kind that a narrative imagination gives to it. The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in "the content of the form," in the way our narrative capacities transform the present into a fulfillment of a past from which we would wish to have descended.
Reviews / Votes
The publication of The Content of the Form... is an important event. It shows that for a long period White has been unremittingly concerned with a revaluation of the concept of narrative in the contemporary context, and that the various different intellectual stimuli which he has received have all helped to focus his intense study of the subject. London Review of Books This oeuvre will continue to force us to pay close, careful, rigorous attention to the syntheses he offers, so that anyone who 'reads'-whether fiction, history, biography, autobiography, whatever-needs to have examined the writings of Hayden White. Style [White] has clearly made significant advances in laying a foundation for a better understanding of the intricate interaction between narrative representation and what it purports to represent in both history and literature. American Historical Review [White] has clearly made significant advances in laying a foundation for a better understanding of the intricate interaction between narrative representation and what it purports to represent in both history and literature. American Historical ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 149 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
368 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-4115-6 (9780801841156)
DOI
10.1353/book.98234
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/1990
Johns Hopkins University Press
€20.49
Available for download
Book
03/1987
Johns Hopkins University Press
€59.00
Article not available for order
Person
Hayden White is professor of the history of consciousness and Presidential Professor of Historical Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the author of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, both available from Johns Hopkins University Press.
Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality
Chapter 2. The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory
Chapter 3. The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation
Chapter 4. Droysen's Historik: Historical Writing as a Bourgeois Science
Chapter 5. Foucault's Discourse: The Historiography of Anti-Humanism
Chapter 6. Getting Out of History: Jameson's Redemption of Narrative
Chapter 7. The Metaphysics of Narrativity: Time and Symbol in Ricoeur's Philosophy of History
Chapter 8. The Context in the Text: Method and Ideology in Intellectual History
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality
Chapter 2. The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory
Chapter 3. The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation
Chapter 4. Droysen's Historik: Historical Writing as a Bourgeois Science
Chapter 5. Foucault's Discourse: The Historiography of Anti-Humanism
Chapter 6. Getting Out of History: Jameson's Redemption of Narrative
Chapter 7. The Metaphysics of Narrativity: Time and Symbol in Ricoeur's Philosophy of History
Chapter 8. The Context in the Text: Method and Ideology in Intellectual History
Notes
Index