Imperfect Histories

The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism

Inbunden, Engelska, 2001

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Imperfect Histories puts "imperfection" at the heart of a theory of historical representation. Ann Rigney shows how historical writing involves dealing with intractable subjects that resist our efforts to know and to shape them. Those who write history, she says, engage in an ongoing struggle to match up what they find relevant in the past with the information and interpretive models at their disposal. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of historical practice. This is especially evident in the various attempts made over the last two centuries to write an "alternative" history of everyday experience. Focusing on historical writing in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, Rigney analyzes a wide range of works by Walter Scott, Jules Michelet, Augustin Thierry, and Thomas Carlyle. She shows how the attempt to write an alternative history brought historical writing into a close yet fraught relationship with literature. The result is a new account of that relationship as it took shape in the romantic period and as it continues to influence contemporary practices.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2001-06-05
Mått152 x 229 x 22 mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor224
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9780801438615
UtmärkelserWinner of the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Award (Americ

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur

As a study of a kind of cultural history focused on the 'experience' of the past —and 'experience' is a recurrent term here—Rigney's book is a work of subtle analysis and broad awareness.(American Historical Review) On the whole, Rigney's is an inciting book, stronger on the historical than on the theoretical side, but rich in knowledge and information, useful in the range of topics it approaches, and generally judicious in its ideas.(Modern Language Quarterly) Rigney opens this fascinating, persuasive study by defining the features of history writing as 'compromise, failure, provisionality, and dissatisfaction.'... Rigney's dense and illuminating footnotes and her extensive bibliography testify to the research she undertook in literary and historical theory and in contemporaneous and contemporary criticism.(Choice) Rigney's principle of selection is novel, and conscientiously pursued; the questions is excludes are also questions it has made newly visible.(European Romantic Review)