In White's view, beyond the surface level of the historical text, there is a deep structural, or latent, content that is generally poetic and specifically linguistic in nature. This deeper content - the metahistorical element - indicates what an "appropriate" historical explanation should be.
 |
Shop the Amazon.com Textbooks Store and save up to 70% on textbook rentals, 90% on used textbooks and 60% on eTextbooks. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Metahistory is something more than a study of philosophies of history (although it is that too, and no doubt the most important work in the field since Collingwood): it is also a methodological manifesto, a more sustained argument for a deep-figural hermeneutic than has been worked out anywhere before now.
(Diacritics )This is a daring, ingenious... tour de force. White has produced a profoundly original 'critique of historical reason.'.
(American Historical Review )A book that will simply have to be reckoned with by all historians who have the slightest interest in the genesis and forms of historical narrative.
(Journal of Modern History )
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By C. R. Dillon
Amazon Verified Purchase
Depending on your familiarity with the study of history this book may be either over- or under-rated. It is fantastic text and highly informative. That said, a few cautionary notes:
This book has diminishing returns. I read the whole thing, but the book is rather formulaic. Spend more time on the Introduction than anything else. Without it you'll be lost.
Also I have little familiarity with the authors White discusses. With the ones I did know, Nietszche, Hegel, and Tocqueville, I found his commentary very interesting. But some familiarity with each author addressed would be worthwhile to enjoy it fully.
Hope it was useful. Whether or not you buy his argument, the work is definitely a modern classic.
This book has diminishing returns. I read the whole thing, but the book is rather formulaic. Spend more time on the Introduction than anything else. Without it you'll be lost.
Also I have little familiarity with the authors White discusses. With the ones I did know, Nietszche, Hegel, and Tocqueville, I found his commentary very interesting. But some familiarity with each author addressed would be worthwhile to enjoy it fully.
Hope it was useful. Whether or not you buy his argument, the work is definitely a modern classic.
23 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Hayden White's Metahistory takes the reader deeply into the winding roads of history writing. From Hegel to Croce, he reviews and analizes the many different ways history was written in the nineteenth century and it's impact and influence in today's historiography. A must for any historian, but a little too deep - and perhaps boring- for those not familiar with history's theory and philosophy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
AN ATTEMPT TO IDENTIFY THE "STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS" OF SEVERAL 19TH CENTURY THINKERS
February 19, 2013
Hayden White (born 1928) is professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, having recently retired from the position of Professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. He has also written The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1973 book, "I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse... as an icon of sets of events presumed to have occurred in times past. In addition... they contain a deep structural content which is generally poetic, and specifically linguistic... which serves as the precritically accepted paradigm of what a distinctively 'historical' explanation should be... One of my principal aims... has been to establish the uniquely POETIC elements in historiography and philosophy of history... Thus I have postulated four principal modes of historical consciousness... Metaphor, Synecdoche, Metonymy, and Irony... I contend that the recognized masters of nineteenth-century historical thinking can be understood... by the explanation of the different tropological modes which underlie and inform their work." (Pg. ix-xi)
He explains, "My method, in short, is formalist. I will not try to decide whether a given historian's work is a better, or more correct, account of a specific set of events or segment of the historical process than some other historian's account of them. Rather, I will seek to identify the structural components of those accounts." (Pg. 3-4)
The philosphers/historians he examines are Hegel, Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce.
He observes, "Thus, in The Birth of Tragedy (Dover Thrift Editions), Nietzsche opposed two kinds of false Tragic sensibility: that which interprets the Tragic vision in the Ironic mode, and that which interprets it in the Romantic mode. His demolition of these two false conceptions of Tragic consciousness provided him with the means of reinterpreting Tragedy as a COMBINATION of Dionysiac and Apollonian insights, as Tragic apprehensions of the world being discharged in Comic comprehensions of it---AND the reverse." (Pg. 334) He adds, "Nietzsche's purpose as a philosopher of history was to destroy the notion that the historical process has to be explained or emplotted in any particular way." (Pg. 371)
He says, "Croce's critics failed to register adequately the qualification he had placed on philosophy's capacity to know reality and history's power to represent it truthfully. At the conclusion of his Theory & History Of Historiography, Croce denied that men could judge with any certitude the nature of their own age." (Pg. 398)
White's book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of history in the modern age.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1973 book, "I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse... as an icon of sets of events presumed to have occurred in times past. In addition... they contain a deep structural content which is generally poetic, and specifically linguistic... which serves as the precritically accepted paradigm of what a distinctively 'historical' explanation should be... One of my principal aims... has been to establish the uniquely POETIC elements in historiography and philosophy of history... Thus I have postulated four principal modes of historical consciousness... Metaphor, Synecdoche, Metonymy, and Irony... I contend that the recognized masters of nineteenth-century historical thinking can be understood... by the explanation of the different tropological modes which underlie and inform their work." (Pg. ix-xi)
He explains, "My method, in short, is formalist. I will not try to decide whether a given historian's work is a better, or more correct, account of a specific set of events or segment of the historical process than some other historian's account of them. Rather, I will seek to identify the structural components of those accounts." (Pg. 3-4)
The philosphers/historians he examines are Hegel, Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce.
He observes, "Thus, in The Birth of Tragedy (Dover Thrift Editions), Nietzsche opposed two kinds of false Tragic sensibility: that which interprets the Tragic vision in the Ironic mode, and that which interprets it in the Romantic mode. His demolition of these two false conceptions of Tragic consciousness provided him with the means of reinterpreting Tragedy as a COMBINATION of Dionysiac and Apollonian insights, as Tragic apprehensions of the world being discharged in Comic comprehensions of it---AND the reverse." (Pg. 334) He adds, "Nietzsche's purpose as a philosopher of history was to destroy the notion that the historical process has to be explained or emplotted in any particular way." (Pg. 371)
He says, "Croce's critics failed to register adequately the qualification he had placed on philosophy's capacity to know reality and history's power to represent it truthfully. At the conclusion of his Theory & History Of Historiography, Croce denied that men could judge with any certitude the nature of their own age." (Pg. 398)
White's book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of history in the modern age.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
great, but ideas not quite novel.
This book is great in its own way: highly readable for readers of all ages, immensely rich in details, and gives some new perspectives into history. Read more
Published on May 25, 2010 by Dawn King
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly sophisticated
Hayden White's METAHISTORY is a sophisticated analysis of historical methodology in the nineteenth century.
Without a doubt, the book is brilliant. Read more
Published on June 26, 2002 by Carter A. Malkasian
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > History > Europe
- Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Historiography
- Books > History > Modern (16th-21st Centuries) > 19th Century
- Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory
- Books > New, Used & Rental Textbooks > Humanities > History > Europe
- Books > New, Used & Rental Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > Literary Theory
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy
