The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation [Paperback]

Hayden White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1990

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 transforms the present into a fulfillment of a past from which we would wish to have desceneded.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Here, White continues and extends the influential analysis of historical writing he began in Metahistory (1974) . He rejects the idea that history reports the past as it actually happened; narrative proceeds according to its own rules, and to use it is to adopt a certain conception of how events are organized. This conception arises not from the "facts" of history but from the nature of narrative: the "content of the form." White sees history as akin to fiction in its methods and tasks, and though he does not adequately address the status of his own workis what he writes intended to be true in a stronger sense than he allows his subjects?this is a provocative work certain to be widely read by historians, philosophers, and literary theorists. David Gordon, Social Philosophy & Policy Ctr., Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

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 )

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (August 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801841151
• ISBN-13: 978-0801841156
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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