This penetrating analysis of eight classic nineteenth-century thinkers explains how historians use literary techniques to write sophisticated historical works.
Since its initial publication in 1973, Hayden White''s Metahistory has remained an essential book for understanding the nature of historical writing. In this classic work, White argues that a deep structural content lies beyond the surface level of historical texts. This latent poetic and linguistic content-which White dubs the "metahistorical element"-essentially serves as a paradigm for what an "appropriate" historical explanation should be.
To support his thesis, White analyzes the complex writing styles of historians like Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, and Burckhardt, and philosophers of history such as Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Croce. The first work in the history of historiography to concentrate on historical writing as writing, Metahistory sets out to deprive history of its status as a bedro
