Figural Realism

Download or read book Figural Realism written by Hayden White and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1998. In his earlier books such as Tropics of Discourse and The Content of the Form, Hayden White focused on the conventions of historical writing and on the ordering of historical consciousness. In Figural Realism, White collects eight interrelated essays primarily concerned with the treatment of history in recent literary critical discourse. "'History' is not only an object we can study," writes White, "it is also and even primarily a certain kind of relationship to 'the past' mediated by a distinctive kind of written discourse. It is because historical discourse is actualized in its culturally significant form as a specific kind of writing that we may consider the relevance of literary theory to both the theory and the practice of historiography."