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CHAPTER II

A History of Historiography: Hayden White on History

Writing

The word “history” is itself ambiguous. It covers (1) the totality of past human
actions, and (2) the narrative or account we construct of them now.1 –W H Walsh

2.1 Introduction

Modes of writing history are generally characterised by several changes with

the progress of human civilisation and culture at various phases of human history.
History writing or historiography of a particular historical period is often marked with
certain salient features that are brought to it by various factors including ideology,
human values, morality, ethics, social changes, etc. Apparently, the historiography of
that particular period is ostensibly different from that of other periods of human
history. This chapter attempts to provide a brief account of the main ideas that
underlie important historiographies ranging from the ancient time to the
contemporary. In the first part, it intends to present a survey and concise analysis of
different conventions and traditions of historiography representing different periods of
the significant historiographical scholarship. And the second part of the chapter
discusses the theoretical proposition of historiography by American philosopher of
history Hayden White. In this way, this chapter tries to focus largely on the Western
historiographical traditions, especially European and American traditions, though
many other traditions like Chinese and Indian historiographies are left out of the
discussion.

Thus, the framework of the chapter is designed to proceed with the

chronological study of historiography by reviewing and critiquing it so as to acquaint
with their varied facets. This diachronic study may enable to accentuate significance,
impact, and place of a particular historiographical tradition among others which
together can provide a comprehensive understanding in succinct manner. Although
the chapter draws on a set of select texts for insights, concepts, ideas and perceptions,
the larger portion of discussion zeroes in on two major texts – R G Collingwood’s The
Idea of History (1946) and Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination
 19

in the Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973). While discussing the history of

historiography, it becomes imperative to examine not only isolated historiographers
like Collingwood and White, but also a host of other historiographers (and their texts
for that matter) from different historical periods such as Fernand Braudel, Karl Marx,
G W F Hegel, Michel Foucault, Keith Jenkins, and the like. In short, the chapter aims
to focus on the writing, methodology, ideas, bias, ideology, and practices of
prominent historiographical traditions since its beginning on the one hand, and to
provide an elaborated discussion on Hayden White’s theory of historiography on the
other.

2.2 History, Philosophy of History and Historiography

Before embarking on the discussion on historiography, it would be pertinent to

understand the distinction among these three concepts: history, philosophy of history
and historiography. Etymologically, history2 is a Greek word meaning an
investigation and inquiry or learning or knowing by inquiry (Online Etymology
Dictionary). Generally, history is both a set of written records of the past human
actions and an academic discipline, and not only uses a narrative to represent the past
events, but also studies the chronological records of events affecting a nation or
people. According to Encyclopedia of Philosophy, history “refers to two distinct,
though related, things. On the one hand it refers to the temporal progression of large-
scale human events primarily, but not exclusively in the past; and on the other hand,
‘history’ refers to the discipline or inquiry in which knowledge of human past is
acquired or sought” (Vol 7, 386). It is evident here that human beings and their
actions are the core concern of history. The Encyclopedia Americana defines history
as “…the past experience of mankind. More exactly, history is the memory of that
past experience, as it has been preserved, largely in written records. In the usual sense,
history is the product of historians’ work in reconstructing the flow of events from the
original written traces or ‘sources’ into a narrative account” (Vol 14, 226). Thus, it
can be said that the repertoire of history consists of sources like documents,
evidences, written records, and “reconstructed” narratives by historians.

On the other hand, the philosophy of history is, as Encyclopedia of Philosophy

avers, conventionally associated with the “…philosophical reflection on the historical
process itself, or it can mean philosophical reflection on the knowledge we have of
 20

the historical process” (Vol 7, 386). Unlike historiography that mainly deals with
method, process and various modes of writing history, the philosophy of history
primarily aims at the goal, objective, orientation, nature and scope of history.
Britannica Encyclopedia defines historiography as “the writing of history, especially
the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of
particulars from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those
particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods. The term
historiography refers to the theory and history of historical writing” (948-949
Micropeadia). Though historiography and the philosophy of history seem to be
interlinked with each other, they noticeably differ in meaning and motif vis-à-vis the
writing and purpose of history.

2.3 Ancient Historiography: Antiquity

Before the father of history Herodotus wrote Histories, history (based on

understanding of the pre-historical documents) was considered an account of the
events that were meticulously designed and exclusively delivered either by the gods
or by their representative agents such as kings on the earth; they were identified with
the incarnation of a god. In other words, those events recorded in ancient documents
were not considered human actions, but were deeds of the god directly or indirectly.
Hence, this kind of history was not considered history proper, but it was called a
quasi-history by Collingwood. Collingwood in The Idea of History strongly argues
that such history appears to be mere assertions of the knowledge that the writer of
history possesses, but not the answer of the questions, nor the result of any researches.
For this kind of history, he proposes a term “theocratic history” where the word
“history” means “not history proper, that is scientific history, but a statement of
known facts for the information of the persons to whom they are not known, but who,
as worshippers of the god in question, ought to know the deeds whereby he has made
himself manifest” (14-15). Thus, it can be said that there was an obvious absence of
the humanity as an agent in those recorded actions, but at the same time they appear
to be partly an instrument and partly a recipient.
 21

Another kind of quasi-history, as Collingwood appropriately explains, is found

in the form of myth3 which unlike theocratic history bears no direct or indirect
association with the human deeds. For Collingwood, the suitable ground for such
claim lies in the fact which states that, “Myth…is not concerned with human actions
at all. The human element has been completely purged away and the characters of the
story are simply gods” (15). At this juncture, it is desirable to understand that the
temporal aspect of myth is always uncertain, since it is absolutely undated and thus,
unacceptable in terms of history proper. It can be argued that a mythical
consciousness of the past is inescapably embedded in theogony4 and embodies a
frame of narratives which incorporate gods and semi-gods as their characters.
Genealogical records and commemorative archives of Egypt and Babylon are some
examples for further illustrations. In Philosophy of History (2003), M C Lemon
defines the manner in which myth is understood in historical narrative of the past. He
writes, “Calling to mind ancient myths we think of often detailed, lengthy narratives
involving the dramatic actions and interactions of gods, and of men of semi-divine,
heroic stature” (16). Intermixed with divine and moral elements, a myth eliminates all
possibilities of any presence of human beings in the historical narrative of the past. It
is thus clear that a mythical consciousness of the past is potentially incapable of
producing history that can be acceptable as a scientific history. Against such
backgrounds, it was the Greek historian Herodotus who is credited for creating a
scientific history by systematically excluding major mythic and divine ingredients
from it and by bringing questions and answers, researches, and human beings in the
domain of history.

2.4 Greco-Roman Historiography

2.4.1 Herodotus

In the fifth century BC the Greek historiography witnessed many historians

who successfully jettisoned the divine, mythical and epic components from their
writing and simultaneously made foray into a new world of historical writing.
Apparently, the history writing of this period underwent radical changes since the
focus of the historian shifted from the divine, semi-divine and supernatural to the
humanity to a great extent. As a result, the methodology of writing was deliberately
fashioned after systematic and scientific inquiry based on researches and thus, history
 22

was presented in the form of narrative of human actions. It is widely acknowledged

that Herodotus was the pioneer historian who introduced a systematic, planned, and
elaborate history in the form of narrative, though his book Histories (c. 430-424 BC)
mainly dealt with wars and major political events of his time. Marine Hughes-
Warrinton writes about Herodotus in Fifty Great Thinkers on History (2004) and
presents her critical views on him in a balancing manner:

Though Herodotus is credited with the production of the first narrative history,
he has been accused of deliberate falsehood, inconsistency, errors of fact and
judgement, undue credulity and easy acceptance of unreliable sources of
information. It is only recently that scholars have begun to appreciate fully his
remarkable fusion of chronology, ethnology, geography and poetry into a
work that is both very readable and an important source of information on the
ancient world. (156)

In other words, Herodotus and his book have been an area of great interest for
scholars, academicians, historians and even literary critics, since history became an
established discipline, particularly from the Enlightenment period. This is partly
because the Herodotean studies unfailingly provides a scope for both positive and
negative criticism of it and partly because Herodotus’s writing is characteristically
marked with both positive and negative features. This can be confirmed from a similar
view on Herodotus expressed by Carolyn Dewald and Johan Marincola in The
Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (2006):

Throughout antiquity we can detect two schools of thought about him, one
seeing him as the ‘father of history’, the first person to put together an accurate
account of the past and to infuse it with meaning by giving causes,
consequences, and the intentions of the participants. But there was also a
persistent strain of criticism that took Herodotus to task for his stories of the
fabulous and the improbable, for the accuracy of his reports of non-Greek
lands, and for his portrayal of a quarrelsome and disunited Greek force. (1)

In the light of these two obviously incompatible views, it can be said that though
criticism to Herodotus and his writings may be valid to some extent, he must be
credited for his method of narration, his intellect for reconciling rational and divine
belief in the Greek historiography and above all, for his beauty of style. Histories
 23

contain a remarkable feature which is his manner of narration, since it bears the mark
of a storyteller’s manner. Despite his flaws and errors, he is considered the first
historian of the Western tradition, for he travelled widely and engaged himself in
research before he offered his writing to the world. It is probably for this reason
Herodotus is continued to be read till date.

2.4.2 Thucydides

If the invention of the science of history (an obvious conversion from legend-
writing) made Herodotus the father of history, it was Thucydides who meticulously
emphasized not only the humanistic purpose and the self-revelatory function of
history, but also stressed the importance of evidence5 in history-writing. This is
manifest in History of the Peloponnesian War 6(c. 406 BC) in which Thucydides
provides a comprehensive account of the war between two powerful city-states of
Greece: Athens and Sparta. His work copiously reflects the amount of details and
information that he collected either from his own direct observation or from other
witnesses till the war lasted (for twenty seven years). M I Finley points out, “All
through it he worked away at his book with a remarkable singleness of purpose,
collecting evidence, sifting, checking and double-checking, writing and revising, and
all the time thinking hard about the problems: about the war itself, its causes and
issues, about Pericles, about the Athenian Empire, about politics and man’s behaviour
as a political animal” (7). His strong determination for ascertaining the evidence,
unlike Herodotus who did not consider it de rigueur, apparently distinguished him
from his predecessors and made him an accomplished historian. It appears to be a
revealing intention about the aim of history writing when Thucydides proclaims in
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War that, “My work is not piece of writing
designed to meet the taste of the immediate public, but was done to last forever” (48).
Thus, this can be said that his work is the earliest example of serious historical
research, because Thucydides displays the same vigour and respect for the truth and
evidence as modern day historians do.

2.4.3 Polybius

After Thucydides a number of historians wrote the histories following his

pattern-both in theme and writing style, but unfortunately those works did not survive
more than a dozen in number. Though the histories of Thucydides’s successors also
 24

covered various other topics, Finley observes that no writer “approached Thucydides
in intellectual rigour or insight. At least five men in the middle or second of half of
the fourth century wrote continuations of Thucydides’ history” (14). After the fifth
century BC in the Hellenistic period, the Greek politics and the historian’s outlook not
only underwent a massive change and but also lacked the epic element which
nourished Herodotus and Thucydides. But it was the Greek-born Roman historian
Polybius who is credited to continue the tradition of the Greek historiography
inaugurated by Herodotus and Thucydides. Finley writes that with a great ambition,
Polybius “undertook to write a ‘universal history’ narrating and analyzing in minute
detail Rome’s conquest of the world from 220 to 168 [BC]…” (441). He wrote the
history of the city of Rome which was at that time politically strong, adult and was
brimming with a zeal of conquest. Thus it was obvious to notice that for Polybius
history was an engagement with politics of the time. Collingwood aptly comments on
Polybius’s motive of writing history, “History, for him, is worth studying not because
it is scientifically true or demonstrative, but because it is a school and training-ground
for political life” (35). In this way, he apparently differs from Herodotus who thought
history as science and from Thucydides who did not raise the question of the value of
history.

For Collingwood, the Greco-Roman historiography consists of two principal

characteristics: humanism and substantialism. In the case of humanism, he notes, it is
evident that history “is a narrative of human history, the history of man’s deeds,
man’s purposes, man’s successes and failures” (41). However, the intervention of
gods and the supernatural agency are occasionally noticeable in the history writing,
their function was often restricted. Thus it may be correct to take into consideration
that whatever happens in history, according to the Greek historiography, it is direct
result of human will, because man is finally responsible for his action and the end he
wants to achieve through it. On the other hand, substantialism is considered as the
main defect of the Greco-Roman historiography, because it prioritises mind as the
ultimate substance which theoretically believed that only what is unchanging is
knowable. Collingwood aptly argues, “… what is unchanging is not historical. What
is historical is transitory event” (42). In other words, the historian has nothing to do
with the substance to which the event happens, because thinking historically and
thinking in terms of substance appear to be incompatible.
 25

2.5 Christian Historiography

As the Roman Empire consolidated its power in Europe, Asia and Africa in
the fourth century AD, Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire.
Consequently, it gave a new impetus to the growth and development of the Christian
historiography that was influence by the Christian theology and the development of
the Biblical canon. It is remarkable that the Christian historians preferred the written
sources such as the Bible for their history writing whereas the Classical historians
relied mainly on the oral sources. It was based on the idea of world history as the
result of divine intervention in the affairs of men and women. Collingwood provides
an encapsulated view on the Christian historiography and states, “All persons and all
peoples are involved in the working out of God’s purpose, and therefore the historical
process is everywhere and always of the same kind, and every part of it is a part of the
same whole” (49). It was resulted in the creation of a unified chronology that
reconciled all history around the birth of Christ.

Since the Christian historiography propagated a universal history, these

writings were in the defence of their religion against pagan world or against rival
Christian groups (heretical groups), though they also included politically unimportant
persons. Hence, history appeared to be in the form of religious apologetics7.
Nevertheless, the Christian historiography may be credited mainly for shaping history
in periodized form through the inclusion of comprehensive chronologies. Eusebius,
for example, wrote the church history in Ecclesiastical History in the fourth century
AD by giving a chronological account of the development of Christianity from the
first century to the fourth century and of course, his full-length historical narrative
was written from the Christian point of view. Thus, it can be argued that the Christian
historiography embodies the following core ideology: there is a God, and God is in
control of history, and history has a moral purpose.

2.6 Medieval Historiography

From the fifth century to the eleventh century, the monks served as both
annalists and chroniclers and produced a corpus of historical writings fused with
ecclesiastical elements in them. Bede, for example, wrote The Ecclesiastical History
of the English People (731) that consists of an extraordinary combination of
 26

chronology and hagiography. In other words, the history was not often written in
objective and rational manner, because those chronicles detail the intervention of God
in human events and the lives of holy men and women. It can be noticed that annals8
were the main product of medieval historiography and the annalist merely set down
the most important events of the current year. However, from the twelfth century to
the fourteenth century, Europe witnessed an intensified progress in culture and
learning. As a result, many encyclopaedic compilations were brought out. The
historiography of this period can be seen as the continuation of Greek learning and
culture. There was a revival of the concept of critical theory and an attention was paid
to rational analysis, cause and effect. History was mainly written by statesmen, high
officials, and prelates. There was a great historical corpus produced by the medieval
chroniclers, that was not fully exploited till recently. In his article “Political Utility in
Medieval Historiography: A Sketch” Gabrielle M Spiegel asserts, “Medieval
historiography offers an excellent subject for investigating the function of the past in
medieval political life, for surely few complex societies have so clearly regulated their
life in accordance with their vision of the past” (315). Though there was no significant
method of writing history, the medieval historiography contributed through the annals
and chronicles in producing extensive historical records of the Medieval Age and
those writings in turn, continued to partially influence the succeeding Renaissance
historiography.

2.7 The Renaissance Historiography

In the wake of the Renaissance in Europe, the historical writing was

apparently bound to change its approach, methods and techniques, because “a return
was made to a humanistic view of history based on that of the ancients” (Collingwood
57). In other words, it was the man who was again in the centre of historical thought,
not the predominance of God and its omnipotent machinery for that matter. Unlike the
ancient time in which the history a priori determined the commands in writing history,
the Renaissance values of historical thought recognized and merited the human effort
and passions. While distinguishing the ancient and the Renaissance historiography,
Collingwood aptly argues, “Man, for the Renaissance historian, was not man as
depicted by ancient philosophy, controlling his action and creating his destiny by the
work of his intellect, but man as depicted by Christian thought, a creature of passion
 27

and impulse. History thus became the history of human passions, regarded as
necessary manifestations of human nature” (57). It can be asserted that it was a clear
departure from the fanciful and ill-founded Medieval historiography, although the role
of divinity was not absolutely eliminated.

2.8 The Enlightenment Historiography

The historiography of the Enlightenment was inclined to transfer the objective

and impartial methods of natural science to the analysis and improvement of human
social structures. It was inspired by natural science and based on formulating the
general rules governing the development of human societies. In other words, it was a
rationalistic historiography where reason dominated the historical thoughts of such
major proponents of historiography such as Vico, Montesquieu, Gibbon etc. It is
noticeable that the strength of the Enlightenment historiography is embodied in its
“…capacity to study particular societies as coherent units and to formulate the theory
that the various aspects of each society’s life were closely interrelated” (571 The New
Encyclopaedia Britannica). Apparently, there was a strong insistence on the relation
of man to his environment in historical writings and in turn, they influenced the
political and religious institutions of that period. This is quite evident that the
historical thoughts of the Enlightenment era held the modern scientific spirit
responsible for the historical methodologies that tried to establish the universal laws
of analysis and explanation of the entire body of human history. But Collingwood’s
claim has a different voice as he proclaims that “…the historiography of the
Enlightenment is apocalyptic to an extreme degree, as indeed the very word
‘enlightenment’ suggests” (80). Of course, his claim is partially based on the writing
of historians like Montesquieu, Gibbon, etc., because they could not satisfactorily
invent the theory of historical causation. Though, the Enlightenment is commonly
considered a monolithic project of the discovery of the modern scientific knowledge,
the historiography of this period was primarily shaped to explain the human action in
the light of the laws derived from the principles of natural science.

2.8.1 Giambattista Vico

Unlike his predecessor Rene Descartes9 (1596-1650) who postulated the

concept of historical scepticism, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is credited (Herder
 28

too by the same token) with the formulation of a “new science”10 in the philosophy of
history that challenged the then prevalent belief that only mathematics and science
were the producers of certain knowledge. In fact, it was the Jewish approach to
history (that was dominated by faith, not by reason) that gave way to the Vico’s ideas
of history which was not only critical in nature, but also observed the general rules of
historiography. In The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Benedetto Croce makes a
strong point as he writes, “The conflict which for the general consciousness existed
between science and faith reappears in Vico’s treatment of history as a distinction and
opposition between Jewish and Gentile history, sacred history and profane. Jewish
history was not subjected, he believed, to the laws of history in general” (145). It can
be argued that Vico’s determination to defy the existing mode of writing history and
to propagate a scientific historiography through his new science made him a
distinguished philosopher of history in the eighteenth century.

Vico’s historiographical propositions state that man can know what they have
themselves created, not any other external things that are supposed to be left to the
wisdom of God. Nature, for example, is intelligible to God only since this is His
creation and the mathematics can be fully explained by man as he invented it. In other
words, only the makers can know and explain what the thing is and why they are so,
not by any other authority. In Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas
(1976), Isaiah Berlin adds further point, “… [M]en’s knowledge of the external world
which we can observe, describe, classify, reflect upon, and of which we can record the
regularities in time and space, differs in principle from their knowledge of the world
that they themselves imposed on their own creations” (xvii). Thus, it is apparent that
though Vico allows the distinction between the two worlds – of God and of man, his
approach to history seems to have more emphasis on the human creation. In
Collingwood’s words, “History, for Vico, is not concerned with the past as past. It is
concerned, in the first instance, with the actual structure of the society in which we
live; the manners and customs which we share with the people around us” (66).
Hence, it can be argued that unlike Descartes, history for Vico, does not distinguish
between questions about ideas and about facts. In other words, they are reconciled to
bring out better understanding of the knowledge that history provides us. In brief,
history is what the human mind constructs of the past, not the past itself.
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2.9 The Romantic Historiography

It is widely agreed that the nineteenth-century’s rejection of an allegedly

ahistorical Enlightenment has often been taken by the historian as a founding moment
of modern historical understanding. The Enlightenment historiography deliberately
eschewed to investigate certain things that were “unenlightened” or “barbaric.” Here,
the Romantic school of historiography marked a departure from the historiography of
the previous age, because it rejected the conception of uniform and unchanging
human nature. In “Romantic Historiography as a Political Force in France,” Jacques
Barzun tries to bring out essence of the Romantic historiography. He writes:

The Romantic interest in the diversity of customs and manners, in local color,
in the middle ages, in new and remote scenes, is an essential part of the
historical spirit. It marks the breaking down of the abstract Reason of the
previous age, and the return to concrete and living detail. To see life as
conflict and contradiction, as a process of growth and evolution, is to see life
historically, and it is thus that the Romanticists saw it. (318)

On this ground, it can be asserted that the Romantic historiography challenged the
existing abstract human reason of the Enlightenment and favoured the human will
instead, so that the scope of historical thought could be widened. In fact, it started
treating “the entire history of man as a single process of development from a
beginning in savagery to an end in a perfectly rational and civilized society”
(Collingwood 88). It was directed to the discovery of the mute past that was,
according to the Enlightenment historians, mere ages of unintelligible barbarism and
dark superstitions.

2.10 Leopold von Ranke

It should not be incorrect to argue that the nineteenth century witnessed a

paradigm shift in the course of historiography with the advent of an array of
distinguished historiographers like Ranke, Hegel, Marx, Croce, Michelet,
Tocqueville, Burckhardt, Nietzsche, etc. Historiography of this century was bound to
be considerably influenced by the methodologies of science, since it was a science-
dominating era. Thus it was quite predictable that in the first quarter of the century,
Ranke rose to introduce a new kind of historiography- scientific historiography. Felix
 30

Gilbert writes in “Historiography: What Ranke Meant,” “Modern historical

scholarship begins with Leopold von Ranke, and ever since his time historians have
appealed to his name and writings to justify their approach to the study of the past”
(393). J D Braw also reiterates a similar opinion, “A modern history of historiography
that does not include the ideal that Ranke postulated in contrast to existing
historiography to write “wie es eigentlich gewesen” – is more or less inconceivable”
(46). It was Leopold von Ranke who can be credited to bring history and
historiography much closer to science by advocating an objective historiography. In a
sense, Ranke thus can be held as the originator of scientific history.

Before Ranke, history had mainly been assigned two major functions in
general – to judge the past and to instruct men for the profit of future years. However,
his aspiration was not to achieve such lofty undertakings, rather he wanted to report
wie es eigentlich gewesen.11 Ranke’s intension was to check the distortion of the aims
of history such as moral or political. Gilbert sums it up, “Ranke implies that,
whenever a historian uses the past to present his views about how people ought to
behave and act, the picture of the past becomes distorted and false: the historian ought
not to go beyond the limits of his task- to show how things were in fact” (394). It was
apparent in Ranke’s writing that the representation of facts was made through a
certain structure or pattern (unlike the manner of positivists12), and he was convinced
that the historical books were works of literature. Gilbert tries to demonstrate it by
revealing Ranke’s technique of composition of history:

As far as possible Ranke… avoids summary statements and lets the narrator
disappear from the story so that the reader is directly confronted with facts and
events. Ranke wants the reader to feel himself a participant of the story.
Ranke’s use of literary techniques allowed him to diminish the distance that
separates past from present, to give the story a pattern that changes between
forward movement and description, and, above all, to make work conform to
the primary requisite of a literary work: to tell a story that has a structure.
(395)

This does not necessarily mean that the task of historians ends after setting forth the
story of the past, but it requires them to delve deep beneath and to reach for what is
behind it – its meaning. At the same time, it cannot be overlooked that history is like
 31

science, because it is primarily concerned with facts and their causal connection-how
they acted upon each other. For Ranke, “The study of the past has a much greater aim
than the teaching of morals or instruction in the conduct of politics” (Gilbert 397).

Much of the Ranke’s emphasis was on his conception of history and

historiography as visual perception or ocularity, since he was strongly committed to
make it the end of historiography. Braw aptly pinpoints this intention, “The aim of
history-writing [Historie] is to bring past life before one’s eyes” (48). In other words,
history should skilfully weave narratives to present facts in a lifelike manner. Here the
fact of this accentuation on ocularity and scientific aspects can be better justified by
scrutinising Ranke’s motive in his historiography. The objective of Ranke’s
historiography becomes clearer when Braw presents its brief comparison with the
existing historiography of that era:

As opposed to the colorless and bloodless historiography that existed, the new
historiography should reflect richness, development, and fullness; in short,
human life. As opposed to what Ranke perceived as fragmented and
fragmenting historiography, the new historiography should show the
coherence and unity of human history. As opposed to what Ranke perceived as
the traditional character of existing historiography, that is, its building on the
accumulated perception of events, the new historiography should concern
itself with the original and authentic experience of the event itself. (56)

At this juncture, it can be argued that this kind of historiography was potentially
capable of denying any strong matrix of multiple interpretations by restricting it to
mere facts and their causal connections in an indirect manner. Here is the reason that
may explain this phenomenon: the aim of such historiography was not realisable in
complete sense and as a result, it served a pivotal role in giving way to a different
historiography.

2.11 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel was one of the leading historiographers of the German school of

historical thought (including Kant, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, and others) and
proposed a new kind of history drawing on the thoughts of his predecessors.
Collingwood explains how Hegel’s new history differs from the existing ones, “The
 32

philosophy of history is for him not a philosophical reflection on history but history
itself raised to a higher power and become philosophical as distinct from merely
empirical, that is, history not merely ascertained as so much fact but understood by
apprehending the reasons why the facts happened as they did” (113-14). This concept
of history is explained in Hegel’s enormously ambitious Philosophy of History (1837)
in which he distinguishes three different modes of historical writing: original history,
reflective history and philosophical history.

Hegel further explains the original history that deals with writings of the
ancient historians (Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.) “who have witnessed, experienced,
and lived through the deeds, events and situations they describe, who have themselves
participated in these events and in the spirit which informed them” (12). Such mode
of history writing allows the historical individuals and nations to express for
themselves, and leaves no scope for the historian’s reflection and perspective on the
past events being written. Thus the scope and time covered in history are too limited
and narrow as compared to other modes of history writing. The reflective history
“covers more than just those events which were actually present to the writer; it
depicts not only what was present and alive in this or that age, but that which is
present in spirit, so that its object is in fact the past as whole” (Hegel 16). In other
words, the scope of history was vastly widened from the only present to the past.
Third kind of history, Hegel proposes, is the philosophical history that reflects on
history from a philosophical point of view.

The characteristic features of Hegel’s philosophy of history, according to

Collingwood, distinguish it from other kinds of history and from his predecessors.
Collingwood highlights those distinctive features in brief and writes that Hegel
“insists that nature and history are different things” (114). Hegel strongly argues that
“History…never repeats itself; its movements travel not in circles but in spirals, and
apparent repetitions are always differentiated by having acquired something new”
(Collingwood 114-15). For him, all history is the history of thought and the force
which is the mainspring of the historical process, is reason. He further contends that
the historical process is essentially a logical process. And finally, the history,
according to Hegel, ends not in the future but in the present. Apart from those
features, his dialectic should be considered in the light of historical progression. In
brief, the dialectic progression of history means that history is the progression in
 33

which each successive movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent

in the preceding movement. This can be demonstrated in the endless circle of thesis,
antithesis and synthesis (that serves new thesis afterwards). Hegel’s theory of dialectic
progression of history paved way to Karl Marx’s “historical materialism” that is based
on the economic conception of history.

2.12 Karl Heinrich Marx

Hegel’s belief that history is rational permeated the nineteenth-century

historiography and continued to uphold in concrete sense by his successors like Baur,
Marx and Ranke later. Unlike idealist Hegel, Marx was particularly specialized in the
history of economic activity and provided a new dimension to historiography that was
embodied in the concept of historical materialism13 (though Marx never used this term
for that matter). According to Melvin Rader, “…Marx employed three models in the
interpretation of history: dialectical development, base and superstructure, and
organic unity” (xvii). For Marx, dialectical development suggests that development
advances through the strife of the opposites that are interdependent and yet conflict
each other. The model of base and superstructure is perhaps most famous, since it is
directly applied in understanding the nature of history. According to this model, the
base always supports the superstructure. In other words, Rader further explains, “The
base, in Marx’s model, is the mode of production, and the superstructure is the
political state with its law, and the culture with its science, philosophy, art, religion,
morality, and customs. Because a superstructure rests on its foundations and not vice
versa, the implication is that the base determines the superstructure” (xix). But the
model of organic totality in effect embodies the features of other two models.
Meaning thereby, it is a kind of structure that is differentiated and dynamic and
applies both to society in cross section and to society in process. Collingwood brings
out the importance of Marx’s historiography and writes, “If all modern treatment of
the history of philosophy goes back to Hegel as the great modern master of the
subject, all modern treatment of economic history goes back in the same sense to
Marx” (126). Thus it may be said that by providing a concrete structure of economics
to history, Marx has not only extensively influenced historiography for his period, but
continues to attract contemporary historians and historiographers.
 34

2.13 Historiography in the Twentieth Century

2.13.1 Fernand Braudel

After the first quarter of the last century, the French historiography was almost
dominated by the Annales School of history that emerged in the wake of the various
subdivisions and specialisations of history: economic history, political history, social
history, and history of science and arts. This school of historical thought was
primarily concerned with history for history per se, and was shaped itself as a
resistance to those multiple bifurcations of the core discipline of history. Compared to
the dominant German school of history led by Leopold von Ranke who emphasised
on the narrative structure to history and to the past event (as it actually happened), the
Annales refused it and developed an almost contrary conviction: that is history as
science of the past and science of the present14. Started in the form of a journal by
Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch and later advanced by Fernand Braudel, the
historiography of the Annales aimed at breaking down the barriers among social
sciences by not only incorporating elements from geography, environment, culture,
politics, but also focusing on the different periods of time (hinting at long-term and
short-term).

As a key proponent of the Annales Braudel gives an outline of his design of

temporality in his On History15 (1980) and distinguishes three broad groups of
historical time: the geographical time that denotes changelessness which embodies
history of man in relation to his surroundings; the social time that means history of
gentle rhythms, of groups and groupings; and the individual time that represents the
traditional history-history of events, of short time. He tries to illustrate history and
writes, “Just like life itself, history seems to us to be a fleeting spectacle, always in
movement, made up of a web of problems meshed inextricably together, and able to
assume a hundred different and contradictory aspects in turn” (10). In his opinion,
history is not unilateral and has no centre at all. For Braudel, the meaning in history is
relational, not substantial: the meaning of events, objects and individual actions does
not lie in themselves, but in the relationship that we construct between them. He, in
his article “Personal Testimony,” explains the objectives of history: “What the
Annales proclaimed, much later, was history whose scope would extend to embrace
all the sciences of man – to the ‘globality’ of all the human sciences, and which would
 35

seize upon them all in some fashion or other to construct its own proper methods and
true domains” (457). He believed that history is as much about the present as about
the past and both past and present illumine each other reciprocally.

2.13.2 Paul Ricoeur

That the strong insistence on the possibilities of scientific approaches to

history advocated by the Annales school of historiography paved the way for a new
formulation on history-writing and it was, in effect, the role of narrative that brought
out significant changes to the existing historiography. One of the most prominent
theorists who have championed the interrelationship between narrative and history, is
Paul Ricoeur whose three volume work Time and Narrative (1984-88) deals with the
reconfiguration of human time through narrative. His idea on the nexus between
history and narrative is shown through his conviction which asserts that, “My thesis is
that history the most removed from the narrative form continues to be bound to our
narrative understanding by a line of derivation that we can reconstruct step by step
and degree by degree with an appropriate method” (Vol I, 91). Ricoeur’s thesis on the
entanglement of temporality and narrativity delineates a systematic distinction
between historical narrative and fictional narrative in the light of temporality which is
the structure of human existence. His narrativist interpretation of history has gained
much wider currency in poststructuralist discourses on historiography since many
historiographers like Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit, etc. strongly upheld Ricoeur’s
formulation later. His theory of the construction of historical time is one of the major
enterprises that influenced contemporary historiography.

2.13.3 Michel Foucault

Against the backdrop of “history proper” as a discipline that strictly seeks the
continuity from the past to the present and often tries to establish the stable
relationship between them, a new methodology in history formulated by Michel
Foucault appears to locate discontinuity instead. He argues that recent developments
in postmodernist and poststructuralist historiography have substantially exhibited
strong potentiality for proliferation of discontinuity in the history of ideas. Mark
Poster in Foucault, Marxism and History (1984) briefly explains Foucault’s concept
of discontinuity:
 36

Foucault attempts to show how the past was different, strange, threatening. He
labors to distance the past from the present, to disrupt the easy, cozy intimacy
that historians have traditionally enjoyed in the relationship of the past to the
present. He strives to alter the position of the historian from one who gives
support to the present by collecting all the meanings of the past and tracing the
line of inevitability through which they are resolved in the present, to one who
breaks off the past from the present and by demonstrating the foreignness of
the past relativizes and undercuts the legitimacy of the present. (74)

In other words, history seems to be abandoning the traditionally associated tasks of

defining relations of simple causality, of circular determination, and of expression
between facts. In defence of discontinuity, Foucault argues in The Archaeology of
Knowledge (1969), “It has now become one of the basic elements of historical
analysis” (9). His conviction for new methodology in history displays a paradigm
shift from a total history to general history. Foucault aptly points out that, “…a total
description [history] draws all phenomena around a single centre – a principle, a
meaning, a spirit, a world-view, an overall shape; a general history, on the contrary,
would deploy the space of a dispersion” (11).

This point of departure from a total history to a general history is marked

with a remarkable change in the modus operandi of the use of documents (used by
traditional historians to build a narrative of the past that is continuous and that merges
with the present). As a result, it is bound to evaluate the metamorphosis in terms of
the function that history is assigned with. With regard to changed function of history,
Foucault mentions that, “[H]istory now organizes the document, divides it up,
distributes it , orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between
what is relevant and what is not, discovers elements, defines unities, describe
relations” (7). Hence, his endeavour is directed to detach the image of history which
has been constituted since the beginning of historiography.

2.13.4 Hayden White

It is widely acknowledged that the project of the narrativist interpretation of

history, systematically started by the narrativists like Paul Ricoeur, is further carried
out and elaborately theorised by Hayden White in his magnum opus Metahistory
(1973). Here he sets forth the interpretative principles on which a historical work is
 37

interpreted. For White, the historical work is “a verbal structure in the form of a
narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and
processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them” (2).
White argues that historians use three kinds of strategy to gain different kinds of
“explanatory effects” – explanation by formal argument, explanation by emplotment,
and explanation by ideological implication. Within each of these strategies he
identifies four possible modes of articulation. They are, in effect, proved to be
instrumental in ascertaining a particular kind of explanatory effect in a work of
history. In short, he believes that historiography does not differ from fiction but is a
form of it.

Like in fiction, White argues, the role of language is crucial in order to provide
a desired explanation to any historical writing, because the past is invented or
imagined, not found by the historians. Thus, a historical work is designed after a
combination of explanatory strategies and modes of articulation and that combination
in turn, brings a historiographical style of a specific kind to historians who practise it
in their own ways. White’s enterprise is demonstrated in his effort that tries to
establish the relation between narrative discourse and historical representation. Later
he tried to elaborate, reinforce, and improve this theory of narrative and history in his
subsequent books: Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (1978), The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1987),
Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effects (2000) and Fiction of Narrative:
Essays on History, Literature and Theory 1957-2007 (2010). The detailed and
elaborated discussion of the theory of historiography by White will follow in the next
section.

II

2.14 Theory of Historiography: Hayden White

In his comprehensive introduction to Metahistory, White considerably

expounds his formal theory of the historical work, which characterizes the study and
analysis of works of history through a structured framework of history writing. While
discussing the details of the theory, he sets forth with the definition of the historical
work, and then describes its four essential constituents: emplotment, argument,
 38

ideology and tropology. After a brief account of the structure of the entire book,
White proceeds with the methodological “Introduction” that specifically delineates
those basic elements which constitute the body of a historical work. White defines the
historical work as “a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that
purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes in the interest of
explaining what they were by representing them” (2 Metahistory). Here we can derive
the idea of narrative from this definition which asserts that narrative is the
indispensable part of any historical work. In other words, narrative is integral to the
historical account, because the representation of the historical data and processes is
cast in the form of narrative. Thus, the interrelationship between narrative and the
historical work can be explained through White’s “theory of the historical work,”
where he distinguishes among the levels of conceptualization in the historical work (5
Metahistory). The followings are the five levels of conceptualization: 1. chronicle; 2.
story; 3. mode of emplotment; 4. mode of argument; and 5. mode of ideological
implication.

2.14.1 Chronicle and Story

On the rudimentary level, chronicle is considered to be the fundamental and

essential element of the historical account, because it renders basic structure to the
historical narrative. In simple definitive words, it is a written account of historical
events arranged in order of their occurrence without analysis and interpretation.
Unlike an annal which simply provides the record of events that occurred in order of
time year by year, a chronicle is the record of a series of historically important events
in a factual and detailed manner. White pinpoints the difference between annals and
chronicle in The Content of the Form:

[T]he annals form lacks completely this narrative component, since it

consists only a list of events ordered in chronological sequence. The chronicle,
by contrast, often seems to wish to tell a story, aspires to narrativity, but
typically fails to achieve it. More specifically, the chronicle usually is marked
by a failure to achieve narrative closure. It does not so much conclude as
simply terminate. It starts out to tell a story but breaks off in medias res, in the
chronicler’s own present; it leaves things unresolved, or rather, it leaves them
unresolved in a storylike way.
 39

While annals represent historical reality as if real events did not display
the form of story, the chronicler represents it as if real events appeared to
human consciousness in the form of unfinished stories. (5)

On the basis of this comparison, it should be understood that the annal does not
directly contribute in making of narrative in absence of strict beginning, middle and
end, whereas the chronicle essentially contains the potential to provide the structure to
a story that in turn, embodies in it the transformative qualities for the structure of
narrative. In other words, the making of story indispensably requires the organization
of historical events in the form of a chronicle, because it facilitates the story with
those events that exhibit certain characteristics of a noticeable beginning, middle and
end.

Further, in the process of its making, a story basically relies on the

arrangement of events in particular manner which can reveal a discernible beginning,
middle and end. Here White explains the process of transformation of a chronicle into
story, “ This transformation of chronicle in story is effected by the characterization of
some events in the chronicle in terms of inaugural motifs, of others in terms of
terminating motifs, and of yet others in terms of transitional motifs” (5 Metahistory).
In a story, it is considered that an event is transformed into an inaugurating event if it
reports to occur at a certain time and place. White further explains, “A transitional
motif, on the other hand, signals to the reader to hold his expectations about the
significance of the events contained in it in abeyance until some terminating motif has
been provided…” (5-6 Metahistory). Thus, this taxonomy of events in three different
labels is broadly marked with both the choice of selection and exclusion of events
according to their historical importance and the autonomy of historians to organize
them in a particular fashion in order to obtain a particular kind of explanation. In
brief, chronicle is open-ended, conations no definite inaugurations and ends without a
culmination, whereas a story has a recognizable form with inaugural, transitional and
terminating motifs.

It would be appropriate to distinguish between the kind of story a historian

uses and a fiction writer deals with in their respective works. All that the historian
aims is to find, identify, or uncover the stories that are already there in chronicles, but
the fiction writer invents them. Basically, the literary fiction enjoys autonomy in
 40

inventing events according to the will of the writers, though they may use the
historical events as point of reference. On the other hand, “the historical works are
made up of events that exist outside the consciousness of the writer” (6 Metahistory).
It is conspicuous here that the events reported in the fictional work such as a novel are
invented in a particular manner, so that they are intentionally kept out of the domain
of history. White further elaborates this point:

Unlike the novelist, the historian confronts a veritable chaos of events already
constituted, out of which he must choose the elements of the story he would
tell. He makes his story by including some events and excluding others, by
stressing some and subordinating others. This process of exclusion, stress, and
subordination is carried out in the interest of constituting a story of a
particular kind. That is to say, he “emplots” his story. (6 Metahistory)

In that sense, the nature of difference between these two kinds of story – historical
and fictional, brings forth a seriousness in the reconstruction of narrative out of a set
of events that is either existing or invented one. For constructing a plot, historians
have to solely rely on the historically unprocessed data and on the arranged events in
the form of chronicles, whereas novelists are creatively independent to defy such
restrictions by inventing events to suit their narrative. Although the construction of
the plot is common for both historian and novelist, their method of construction,
purpose and organization of events in it have certainly different modus operandi for
them.

2.15 Explanation by Emplotment

Now we will discuss the next level of conceptualization of the historical

work, since we know how chronicle and story contribute in making a plot through
arrangements of events in a particular manner. Henceforth, the locus of our discussion
will shift from the making of story and plot to the explanation of the historical work.
The question is how a historical work is provided meaning to it. How does
emplotment bring an explanation to it? In order to understand these questions, it
would be better to know what the emplotment is and how it contributes to bringing an
explanation to the historical work. According to White, “Providing the ‘meaning’ of a
story by identifying the kind of story that has been told is called explanation by
 41

emplotment” (7Metahistory). He further illustrates it by classifying the story into the

four different modes of emplotment: romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire. In other
words, if the historian provides the plot structure of a tragedy to his story in the course
of narrating it, then he has explained it in one way. It would be appropriate to state
that the explanation to a historical work is a matter of emplotment in a certain mode
and casting a story in that mode is the privilege, choice or intention of the historian.

While defining emplotment, White writes, “Emplotment is the way by which a

sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a
particular kind” (7 Metahistory). It suggests that the historian excises his/her freedom
of choice for designing the story in some selected mode, so that a desired explanatory
effect can be brought to the historical narrative. Here it is important to underline the
idea of explanatory effect, because it appears that the teleology of the historical work
is to render a specific explanation to it. While talking about the explanatory effect,
White explains:

[H]istories gain part of their explanatory effect by their success in making

stories out of mere chronicles; and stories in turn are made out of chronicles
by an operation which I have elsewhere called “emplotment.” And by
emplotment I mean simply the encodation of the facts contained in the
chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structure, in precisely the
way that [Northrop] Frye has suggested is the case with “fictions” in general.
(83 Tropics of Discourse)

Thus, it can be asserted that the association between the explanation and the
emplotment essentially defines the teleological design of the historical work and all
that the historian does is to legitimatize and justify that association. In order to
provide a comprehensive description, the attention is given to the source of the modes
of emplotment or plot structure first, then the kinds of plot structure in the succeeding
paragraphs.

Regarding the source of the plot structure, White acknowledges the

contribution of Northrop Frye who deals with various plot structures in his work
Anatomy of Criticism (1957). While borrowing Frye’s terminology and classification
of the plot structure in the work of fiction such as myth, romance, tragedy, comedy
and satire, he seems to be aware of other taxonomies and genres postulated by literary
 42

theorists. But it may not be incorrect to put that White selects only four categories of
Frye’s classification –romance, tragedy, comedy and satire for his theory, because he
considers them useful in the analysis of the historical work. It is remarkable to
observe that the foundation and purpose of Frye’s taxonomical efforts is motivated by
the individual (the hero), because he is the fountainhead of all actions in the works of
fiction. Frye writes, “In literary fiction the plot consists of somebody doing
something… Fictions, therefore, may be classified, not morally, but by the hero’s
power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same” (33).
Thus, the ground of classification of plot structure is relatively dependent of the
hero’s strength, performed action and failures as well.

However, White chooses to expand the scope of Frye’s taxonomy and further
uses it to classify the historical work as the whole into a particular plot structure. Here
we should understand that the historical work as a unit is categorized in one of those
four plot structures, though many stories within that historical narrative might be
emplotted in any of those four categories. The statement gains prominence when
White strongly asserts, “The important point is that every history, even the most
‘synchronic’ or ‘structural’ of them, will be emplotted in some way” (8 Metahistory).
Hence, his idea of employing the Frye’s classification of plot structure in the study of
the historical work reveals the interrelationship of literary elements and historical
narrative. Now each of the models of emplotment will be discussed individually.

2.15.1 The Romance

In general terms, romance16 is a literary form that is usually characterized by

its treatment of chivalry, the courtly love and adventures. According to A Dictionary
of Literary and Thematic Terms (2006), this is “a type of narrative featuring
adventures in exotic places, love stories, and/or the celebration of simple rustic life”
(Edward Quinn 368). But Frye’s classification of this form differs from such
definitions, because he identifies the romance on the basis of the hero’s power. Here,
Frye’s description will illustrate more:

If superior in degree to other men and to the environment, the hero is the
typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvellous but who himself
identifies as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which
the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and
 43

endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking
animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power
violate no rules of probability once the postulates of romance have been
established. (33)

Following these criteria, it can be derived that the romance embodies the actions of
human being through its hero, though he is superior in power and possesses
extraordinary qualities than the ordinary man. On the other hand, White observes
romance in an elevated sense when he writes, “The Romance is fundamentally a
drama of self-identification symbolized by the hero’s transcendence of the world of
experience, his victory over it and his final liberation from it…” (8 Metahistory).
Further he provides examples of the Holy Grail legend and the story of the
resurrection of Christ in Christian mythology. As a result, we can divide the romance
in two forms: a secular form that deals with the chivalry and courtly affairs and a
religious form. But in the historical work, the content of the romance is immaterial,
since the entire concern of the historian is the manner in which the plot structure is
constructed in order to bring a particular explanation to his narrative.

In terms of representation, the romance is intended to expose the fatuous ideas

and non-empirical opinion of the romantic conception of the world, because the real
world seems to deny the hyper-realistic adventures and actions by its hero. Through a
close analysis of the romance, we discover that it depicts, according to White, “the
triumph of good over evil, of virtue over vice, of light over darkness and of the
ultimate transcendence of man over the world in which he was imprisoned by the
Fall” (9 Metahistory). Hence, it can be stated that the motif and the teleological model
of the romance are considered to influence the process of plot structure of the
historical work. What White is interested in is the manner of structuration of the plot
in the form of romance by the historian, since he/she (historian) wants his stories to be
characterized by the meaning and explanation of a particular kind.

2.15.2 The Tragedy

In literary discourse, the tragedy17 is often associated with a drama that deals
with the problems of man in grand, dignified and serious manner, but it concludes
with sorrowful and terrible end. Now it is not confined to the drama, but the literary
narrative (novel) also uses the plot structure of the tragedy. In the tragedy, it is
 44

generally considered that the protagonist encounters many agonizing and miserable
events and eventually falls into the fateful end because of his actions. For a definition,
the tragedy is, according to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (2009), “[a]
dramatic (or, by extension, narrative) work in which events move to a fatal or
disastrous conclusion for the protagonist, whose potential greatness is cruelly wasted
through error or the mysterious working of fate” (1002). It is noticeable that in the
tragedy the protagonist is imprisoned through his fate and does not possess any
extraordinary power of the hero of the romance.

Frye’s identification of both the tragic mode and the hero of a tragedy, is
slightly different, for it is based on the relative comparison of the power of the hero
and his natural environment. He distinguishes the hero of the tragedy and writes, “If
superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment, the hero is a
leader. He has authority, passions, and powers of expression far greater than ours, but
what he does is subject both to social criticism and to the order of nature. This is the
hero of high mimetic mode, of most epic and tragedy…” (33-34). In other words, even
though the hero is endowed with some better qualities than ordinary men, his deeds
lead him to inescapably wretched destiny that makes him collapsed before certain
social and natural forces.

In White’s view, the tragedy represents the struggle of the protagonist to arrive
on certain reconciliations with social norms and natural environments he inhabits.
Therefore, these reconciliations partially embody the forces at play in social and
natural worlds and try to demonstrate the unchangeable circumstances which men
ultimately fail to circumvent. White explains the features of the tragedy:

The reconciliations that occur at the end of Tragedy are much more somber;
they are more in the nature of resignations of men to the conditions under
which they must labor in the world. These conditions, in turn, are asserted to
be inalterable and eternal, and the implication is that man cannot change them
but must work within them. They set the limits on what may be aspired to and
what may be legitimately aimed at in the quest for security and sanity in the
world. (9 Metahistory)

On this ground, it is argued that the edifice of tragedy is erected on the foundation of
conflict, because it is originated in the conflicting forces working between men and its
 45

environment – social and natural. Since those forces viciously decimate the efforts of
human redemption from the world, the tragedy seeks to manifest a revelation of the
nature of those forces. The tragedy depicts the seriousness of the mankind in
confronting the conflict and the opposing forces in earnest manner. In this way, the
plot structure of the tragedy appears to be more appropriate in order to elicit a desired
explanation from the historical narrative moulded after the tragic fashion.

2.15.3 The Comedy

Like the tragedy, the comedy is a type of drama or another literary form
(novel, story, etc.), but unlike the former, it underlies the basic principle of
amusement to the audience or readers. It is remarkable that the fundamental
difference between the comedy and the tragedy is that while the former is
teleologically designed to end with a possibility of the solution of the problems the
protagonist encounters with, the latter represents the inescapable conditions which the
hero comes across on his way and finally ends with a sense of despair and suffering.
Although both the comedy and the tragedy are conceived on the similar but
fundamental premise that they contain conflict and contradiction in their origin, their
purposes are manifested with the progress of their respective plots.

According to Frye’s theory of modes, it is obvious that the position, power and
authority of the hero are decisive factors for qualifying as a particular plot-structure.
In case of the comedy, he mentions, “If [he is] superior neither to other men nor to his
environment, the hero is one of us: we respond to a sense of his common humanity,
and demand from the poet the same canon of probability that we find in our own
experience. This gives us the hero of low mimetic mode, of most comedy and of
realistic fiction” (34). Here, the hero is considerably treated inferior to that of the
tragedy and almost equal to us. Thus, it is certain that he must be bound to
compromise with various forces he confronts before he is made capable of securing a
transitory victory over the world by means of reconciliations.

Now it is widely acknowledged that reconciliations substantially acquire an

important position in both forms –the tragedy and the comedy, but the outcomes of
those reconciliations are realized in two absolutely different ways: in pain and
suffering in the case of the former and in humorous amusement in the latter. White
agrees on this point when he remarks that, “In Comedy, hope is held out for the
 46

temporary triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional

reconciliations of the forces at play in the social and natural worlds” (9 Metahistory).
As far as the demonstration of those reconciliations is concerned, they are symbolized
in the forms of gathering, union, and festive occasions in the literary work. Here, of
course, the writer takes cue from those occasions and skilfully uses them to terminate
his work of the comedy. White further adds some more points, “The reconciliations
which occur at the end of Comedy are reconciliations of men with men, of men with
their world and their society; the condition of society is represented as being purer,
saner, and healthier as a result of the conflict among seemingly inalterably opposed
elements in the world…” (9 Metahistory). On the other hand, in the tragedy it is
shown that man cannot change the condition of the society, but must work within
them.

2.15.4 The Satire

In generic term, the satire is regarded as the literary form of irony or the ironic
mode of writing (literary representation). Unlike the comedy that evokes laughter at
the end, the satire is directed to ridicule, contempt and scorn the subject it deals with.
Through the means of derision, it predominantly aims to censure the human folly,
vice, shortcomings etc. and uses laughter as weapon with an intention to social
reform. As per the categorization by Frye, the plot structure is assigned an ironic
mode “[i]f inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of
looking down on a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity, the hero belongs to the
ironic mode” (34). Even though the identification of ironic mode in the fiction by
Frye appears to indicate some discrepancy and inconsistency between his
classification and the traditional understanding of it, they seem to retain their common
underlying purpose that is to reveal weakness, flaw, defect, etc. in the human kind vis-
à-vis the world he lives in.

For White, the satire is “a drama of diremption18, a drama dominated by the

apprehension that man is ultimately a captive of the world rather than its master, and
by the recognition that, in the final analysis, human consciousness and will are always
inadequate to the task of overcoming definitively the dark force of death, which is
man’s unremitting enemy” (9 Metahistory). It is noticeable that the kind of visions of
the world is represented in the satire is essentially toned with irony, which in turn is
 47

manifested through the bleak possibilities, gloomy circumstances, and dark forces
working against the destiny of man. Moreover, in the satire the ways of emplotting the
process of reality appear to be exactly opposite to the ways in the romance. White
further observes, “Satirical mode of representation signals a conviction that the world
has grown old. Like philosophy itself, Satire ‘paints its gray on gray’ in the awareness
of its own inadequacy as an image of reality” (10 Metahistory). Thus, it can be argued
that like the tragedy, in the satire also there is no emergence of new forces or
conditions out of the processes, but on the contrary it foregrounds the notion of “the
Same in the Different” (11 Metahistory). It should be seen in contrast with the
romance and the comedy in which the social and natural worlds are altered in
conformity with a changed and transformed order by bringing the temporal triumph
over the existing world.

Now after discussing these four types of emplotment, this is evident that their
roles in characterizing “intended meaning” or “desired explanation” to the narrative –
historical or fictional, are crucial and significant. As far as the historical work is
concerned, a historian exercises his autonomy to mould the narrative in a particular
mode of emplotment, for the ultimate purpose of the historians is to endow their
historical narrative an explanatory effect of a particular kind. While underlining the
importance of the emplotment, White writes:

These four archetypal story forms provide us with a means of characterizing

the different kinds of explanatory affects a historian can strive for on the level
of narrative emplotment. And this allows us to distinguish between
diachronic, or processionary, narratives…and the synchronic, or static,
narratives…. In the former, the sense of structural transformation is uppermost
as the principle guiding representation. In the latter, the sense of structural
continuity…or statis…predominates. (10 Metahistory)

Thus, the explanation by emplotment provides the historian four modes of the plot-
structure through which he/she actually configures the historical narrative. Further,
these plot-structures facilitate the cognitive operations by which the historian wants to
explain the past events at the next level of conceptualization.
 48

2.16 Explanation by Formal Argument

After the historian emplots his narrative account in a particular plot-structure,

s/he embarks on another level of conceptualization in which he explains in detail the
end of organization of the past events in a particular fashion in the historical work.
White on this level identifies an operation which he calls explanation by formal,
explicit, or discursive argument. He further writes, “Such an argument provides an
explanation of what happens in the story by invoking principles of combination which
serve as putative laws of historical explanation” (11Metahistory). In order to establish
such putative laws, White suggests that the historian takes recourse to the
nomological-deductive19 argument to provide explanations to his story. In other
words, on the whole the principles of combination hinge upon the basic physical laws
or rules of reasoning that underline the process of the emplotment. To illustrate this
point, here he presents the classic example of Marx’s law of the relationship between
the base and the superstructure which states that any transformation in the base will
bring a transformation in the superstructure, but the reverse relationship is not
effectively true at all. At this juncture, it is necessary to distinguish the importance of
both the emplotment and the nomological-deductive argument, since both of them
contribute in explanation of the historical narrative.

For the historical work, the historical explanation at this level of

conceptualization is considered as a discursive argument that can be available in many
forms according to their analytical capability. Here the historical account as the
formal argument largely derives its meaning from different notions of the nature of
historical reality and those notions are formed through the formulations of some ideal
philosophical systems or world views postulated by the philosophers like Plato,
Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, etc. But White borrows his formulation
of the world view/hypothesis from Stephen C Pepper’s World Hypothesis: A Study in
Evidence (1942) in which six such hypotheses20 are examined. He further declares,
“Following the analysis of Stephen C. Pepper in his World Hypotheses, I have
differentiated four paradigms of the form that a historical explanation, considered as a
discursive argument, may be conceived to take: Formist, Organicist, Mechanistic, and
Contextualist” (13 Metahistory). These four world hypotheses are considered
relatively adequate hypotheses to interpret the world theories.
 49

For a simple definition of the hypothesis Pepper writes that “In the most
rudimentary common-sense view a hypothesis is identified with a guess or a hunch,
and is considered good if it turns out right, bad if it does not” (71). Further, in
“Finding the Philosophical Core: A Review of Stephen C. Pepper’s World
Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence,” Steven C Hayes et al. define the world
hypothesis, “A world hypothesis is a model of the universe of observations and
inferences” (97). Through his book, Pepper offers “a hypothesis concerning the origin
of world theories – a hypothesis which, if true, shows the connection of these theories
with common sense, illumines the nature of these theories, renders them
distinguishable from one another, and acts as an instrument of criticism for
determining their relative adequacy” (84). Thus for White, Pepper’s four hypotheses
serve as the rubric for establishing valid reasons among the events of the historical
fields in the process of emplotment. Those four theories of formal arguments
mentioned above will be discussed individually in the following passages.

2.16.1 Formism

Formism is the first world hypothesis from Pepper’s simple, yet

comprehensive, taxonomy of four metaphysical worldviews that underlie all
systematic thinking. According to him each world view is based on a root metaphor21
for reality and “[t]he root metaphor of formism is similarity” (151). In other words,
this hypothesis affirms that it is based on similarity or analogy among events of the
universe. It emphasizes on the recognizable form22 or category as characteristic
qualities for sanctioning explanations to the events. Regarding the formist theory of
truth in history, Pepper further explains:

[T]here are two kinds of truth in formism, depending upon the categorical
status of the objects of reference: historical truth, and scientific truth. The first
refers to existence and consists in descriptions of the qualities and relations of
particular events. The second refers to subsistence and consists in descriptions
of norms and laws. …There is no necessity in historical truths. The historian
describes events as they have occurred. If he finds that they are causally
related, he describes the causal relations as part of the existential events. But
his interest is primarily in the character of the events that occurred, not in the
laws which they may exemplify. (182)
 50

In this way, the substructure for erecting the teleological differentiations between the
historical and scientific truth has accentuated the pattern of explanations in the formist
worldview. With the stress on describing the characteristics of the events in history,
this hypothesis deliberately discards the quest for the causal laws between the
historical events.

Based on Pepper’s view, White systematically attempts to incorporate the

formist theory of the world in his theory of historiography in order to provide a kind
of explanation to the historical narrative. According to White, “The Formist theory of
truth aims at the identification of the unique characteristics of objects inhabiting the
historical field…When the historian has established the uniqueness of the particular
objects in the field or the variety of the types of phenomena which the field manifests,
he has provided a Formist explanation of the field as such” (13-14 Metahistory).
Hence, his stress on the uniqueness that underlines the series of events distinguishes
the Formist theory from other worldviews. In order to complete the Formist
explanation to the historical field, the identification of particularities of objects from
that historical field is required. Then, on the basis of such identification, the historical
explanation tries to dismiss the similarities that appear to underscore all the objects in
that field. In the analytical operations of the data, Formism is dispersive in nature, not
integrative like organicism and mechanism.

2.16.2 Mechanism

The mechanistic theory of truth assumes that the universe, like a machine,
consists of parts which can be understood in isolation from the whole. According to
Pepper, “The root metaphor of mechanism is a machine” (186). Through this analogy
of a machine, it can be well understood that the mechanist’s goal is to discover the
parts and the relations among the parts of the existent machine. Steven C Hayes et al.
explain further, “[M]echanists do not simply describe parts in the common-sense
world; rather, they seek to discover the true nature of a given event by specifying
what kind of part it really is and by placing it properly in the machine” (99). Unlike
Formism, Mechanism is integrative in nature, and thus, all the parts are assumed to fit
together to create the whole. Hence, it is remarkable to note that the mechanistic
theory seeks to establish the causal connections among the parts so that they can be
 51

understood independently and in turn, their contribution in the making of the whole
can be explained through those connections.

Drawing on Pepper’s ideas of the mechanistic hypothesis, White reaffirms that

the objects of the historical field exist in the form of part-part relationship and that
relationship is determined by the laws that govern it. He observes, “The Mechanistic
theory of explanation turns upon the search for the causal laws that determine the
outcomes of processes discovered in the historical field” (17 Metahistory). It can be
illustrated through the writing of Marx who conforms to the mechanistic theory,
because he studied history in order to ascertain the laws that govern its operations and
wrote history in order to display in a narrative form those laws. It would be
appropriate to underline the fact that this theory strongly emphasizes more on the
consistency of the class of individual entities than on the individual entities
themselves. Besides, it also privileges the maintenance of the laws that explain the
relations among events of the historical field over the strict following of the class of
those entities in the historical processes. White further maintains, “Ultimately, for the
Mechanist, an explanation is considered only when he has discovered the laws that are
presumed to govern history in the same way, that the laws of physics are presumed to
govern nature. He then applies these laws to the data in such a way as to make their
configurations understandable as functions of those laws” (17Metahistory). Hence,
according to the mechanistic worldview, the writing of history is much more about
observing and executing the laws that interact the individual events of the historical
field and govern the course of history than considering the peculiarities and
similarities of those events.

2.16.3 Contextualism

It is the primacy of the context that bears the significance in the contextualist
theory of truth and explanation. Here the context can be understood as the historical
event or act, but not as a dead description of a thing done. Hence, “[T]he root
metaphor of contextualism is the ongoing act in context” (Stevens C Hayes et al. 100).
On the other hand, context, in dictionary manner, is described as circumstances that
form the setting for an event. By the same token, Pepper too argues that the historical
event should be regarded as the origin of contextualism and thus, this can be called as
the root metaphor of this theory (232). In fact, his idea of the historical event does not
 52

correspond to a past event – dead or exhumed, but to the real historical event which
means the event in its actuality. In other word, the emphasis is laid on the dynamic
and active act that can be verified in temporal and spatial circumstances in the
present. Pepper further explains, “[C]ontextualism holds tight to the changing present
event…It is this hold that makes contextualism a distinctive philosophical attitude and
a world theory” (233). Thus, it can be argued that the basic premise in the
contextualism is that it works from the present event outward and at the same time, it
privileges the connecting events over the final and wider structure of the world.

Obviously, White’s interpretation of the contexualist theory of truth and

explanation is largely informed by Pepper’s interpretation, since the former reaffirms
the significance of this theory for the explanation and meaning of the historical
narrative constructed out of the past events or the historical field. According to White,
contextualism should be understood as the representation of the functional meaning
and significance of the events that are available in the historical field. He argues that,
“The informing presupposition of Contextualism is that events can be explained by
being set within the ‘context’ of its occurrence” (17-18 Metahistory). In
contextualism, there is a constant insistence on the explanation of the process of
occurrence of the historical event by the determination of the functional
interrelationship among those events of that historical field in a prescribed time.

The modus operandi of contextualism entails the selection of some event-

however small or vast it may be – from the historical fields as the subject of study and
then proceeds to underline the common thread that connects this event with the
different areas of the context. White further explains:

The threads are identified and traced outward, into the circumambient natural
and social space within which the event occurred, and both backward in time,
in order to determine the ‘origins’ of the event, and forward in time, in order to
determine its ‘impact’ and ‘influence’ on subsequent events. This tracing
operation ends at the point at which the ‘threads’ either disappear into the
‘context’ of some other ‘event’ or ‘converge’ to cause the occurrence some
new ‘event.’ (18-19 Metahistory)
 53

In this context, the intention appears to ascertain the link of the event and to associate
it with the broader context in order to provide a wider explanation to it by setting it in
various contexts. Apart from providing the narrative model of the process in the
historical field, contextualism enacts the hierarchy of signification of the historical
time and it, in turn, affects the construction of the historical narrative.

2.16.4 Organicism

Though this term seems to contain biological connotations, the organicist

theory of truth considers the process of the organic development as its root metaphor.
According to Pepper, “The organicist believes that every actual event in the world is a
more or less concealed organic process” (281). Hence, it would not be incorrect to
state that an investigation of any actual or historical process in this world is destined
to reveal its underlying organic structure. Pepper’s comparison of organicism with
contextualism exhibits much more interesting points such as, “organicism has to deal
mainly with historic processes even while it consistently explains time away, whereas
contextualism has to admit integrative structures surrounding and extending through
given events even though these structures endanger its categories. Organicism takes
time lightly or disparagingly; contextualism takes it seriously” (281). Thus, the focus
of this theory is on complex and interrelated processes that characterize living
organisms. It works towards the integration of the process and deliberately discards
the duration of that process. Unlike mechanism, the whole is the basic, not the
synthesis of the parts, because the parts are meaningless except in the context of the
whole.

While borrowing from Pepper’s formulation, White attempts to construct his

theory of organicism in a compact and concise manner with some illustrations from
the nineteenth century historians. Being integrative in nature, the organicist theory of
truth and argument allows historians to structure their narrative from a set of diverse
events that is consolidated and crystallized in a greater integrated entity. This
integrated narrative embodies the characteristics of a greater importance than their
individual entities which are analysed and described in the course of the narrative.
White further elaborates this point:
 54

The Organicist attempts to depict the particulars discerned in the historical

fields as components of synthetic process. At the heart of the Organicist
strategy is a metaphysical commitment to the paradigm of the microcosmic-
macrocosmic relationship; and the Organicist historian will tend to be
governed by the desire to see individual entities as components of processes
which aggregate into wholes that are greater than, or qualitatively different
from, the sum of their parts. (15 Metahistory)

Hence, it is noticeable that the quality of the whole here, unlike in the mechanism, is
destined, intended and designed to be different from its parts. It can be argued that the
historian who prefers this mode is more interested in distinguishing the integrative
process than in describing in isolated events. In other words, this theory can be well
characterized as teleological in its orientation and operation, since it sufficiently
demonstrates the tendency to determine the end or goal towards which all the process
of the historical field are headed for. Moreover, in the organicist strategy of
explanation the constant search for the laws is discarded and the identification of the
principles and ideas is privileged instead.

Following the discussion of the four modes of formal argument, it is necessary

to assess their significance in the writing of history by the historian – both academic
and professional. It is often observed that the academic historian usually selects
formism and contextualism on the one hand, and the professional historian
mechanism and organicism on the other. The underlying process, of course, of
adopting the chosen explanatory strategies among historians is marked by the trite
debate that is whether history as a discipline is science. Those historians who believe
that history should be rigorous discipline and hence, close to science, choose formism
and contextualism and those who believe that history be proto-science adopt
organicist and mechanist modes of explanation and argument, precisely because it is
often contested that history cannot function like science. At this juncture, a question
of validity and justification of selecting a particular formal argument arises before the
historian who, at the end, decides to favour that argument on the basis of his or her
ethical disposition. Hence, it would generally be acknowledged by historians that the
intrinsic principles for selection of particular modes of formal argument (and
emplotment for that matter), are guided by their ethical opinion in general, and by the
 55

ideological in particular. Thus, it can be argued that the relevance and significance of
different ideologies in writing history is crucial, since historians are often
ideologically motivated while providing a particular kind of explanation to their
historical narrative.

2.17 Explanation by Ideological Implication

On the third and last level of the conceptualization of the explanation of the
historical work, White propounds the theory of explanation by the ideological
implication. In fact, the historian who is primarily obliged to favour his or her
ideological positions encodes the implicitness of the ideology in the construction of a
historical narrative. It is evident that some irreducible ideological components can be
identified in every historical account of reality, because history as a discipline is not
considered to be science. Thus, it is essentially true that the presence of such elements
is integral to the non-scientific or proto-scientific disciplines like history. White aptly
explains his concept of ideological implication when he writes, “The ideological
dimensions of a historical account reflect the ethical elements in the historian’s
assumptions of a particular position on the question of the nature of historical
knowledge and the implications that can be drawn from the study of the past events
for the understanding of the present ones” (22 Metahistory). Considering ethical
inclination as influencing factor to the nature of historical knowledge, the structure of
the historical work is impacted by the historian’s covert or overt association with the
particular position in terms of ideology he appears to inadvertently or intentionally
subscribes to.

Further, White declares Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1936) as his
main source upon which his edifice of the ideological implication is erected. At the
same time, he reaffirms that there is a complete denial of any affiliation of such
ideologies with those of the political parties, because those four basic ideologies
postulated by him, reflect the underlying connection between the past and the present
that significantly shapes the kind of knowledge of the social praxis and that of present
world. For making it clearer, White defines ideology23 as, “a set of prescriptions for
taking a position in the present world of social praxis and acting upon it (either to
change the world or to maintain it in the current state)…” (22 Metahistory). Thus, for
White, ideology is not considered to be directly or indirectly associated with either
 56

political power or social group or class, but it should be understood as the notion that
allows historians to take a particular position while structuring a narrative out of the
past events. He further explains, “Just as every ideology is attended by a specific idea
of history and its processes, so too, I maintain, is every idea of history attended by
specifically determinable ideological implications” (24 Metahistory). Thus, White
brilliantly underlines the significance and influence of the ideology in the construction
of historical works. In order to differentiate it from the political ideology, it would be
appropriate to quote John Schwarzmantel here, “In the widest possible sense an
ideology thus offers answers to the questions of what kind of society is desirable”
(25). Although Mannheim proposes five ideologies including Fascism, White
considers only four of them appropriate to postulate his theory of explanation of the
historical work. According to him, those four ideological positions are conservatism,
liberalism, radicalism and anarchism, but these designators are given by him. Here the
apparent reason for selecting only the four out of them is that these positions
essentially qualify to be scientific, realistic and rational in nature and spirit. These
basic ideological positions are described individually in following passages, although
they have to be discussed in relation to one another. Moreover, the basic criteria upon
which the discourse will follow are the concepts of social change, social congruence,
social transformation, utopia, time orientation, etc.

2.17.1 Conservatism

The characterization of these four ideological positions can be understood by

measuring them with the degree of representation of social change they approve,
though all of them certainly exhibit the desirability to allow it happen in the historical
process. Among them, conservatism appears to be most rigid ideology vis-à-vis
liberalism, radicalism, and anarchism, because it is relatively most suspicious of the
programmatic transformations of the status quo of the social order. As a result, it can
be asserted that conservatism is the least optimistic in terms of the prospect of the
rapid transformation. Citing Mannheim’s analogies for the pace of social change,
White affirms that “Conservatives tend to view social change through the analogy of
plantlike gradualizations, while Liberals…are inclined to view it through the analogy
of adjustments, or ‘fine tunings’, of a mechanism” (24 Metahistory). To put it another
way, conservatism favours the natural rhythm for the transformation in the social
 57

structure and demonstrates no desire of effective change in the structural relationship,

but allows the particular parts of the whole to undergo inevitable changes.

With regards to the time orientation of these ideological positions, White

writes, “According to Mannheim, Conservatives are inclined to imagine historical
evolution as a progressive elaboration of the institutional structure that currently
prevails, which structure they regard as a ‘utopia’- that is, the best form of society that
men can ‘realistically’ hope for, or legitimately aspire to, for a time being” (25
Metahistory). To put it differently, this ideological position essentially dismisses the
prospect of transformation in the social structure, because it makes us believe that the
ideal society already prevails and in turn, any means to bring changes is almost
irrelevant. White further mentions Mannheim’s classification of these ideological
positions with respect to their tendency towards two different concepts- social
congruence and social transcendence, and then reveals that they all consider social
change in very serious manner. As far as conservatism is concerned, it is the most
socially congruent position.

2.17.2 Liberalism

Like conservatism, liberalism also tends to be socially congruent, but it is

relatively less than conservatism. It is appropriate to mention that if we consider
social transformation as the basis of assessment of the ideological positions in
general, the liberal appears to be more vigorous and optimistic about the change in
social order than the conservative. On the other hand, White further argues, “In the
both ideologies the fundamental structure of the society is conceived to be sound, and
some change is seen inevitable, but change itself is regarded as being most effective
when particular parts, rather than structural relationships, of the totality are changed”
(24 Metahistory). While considering liberalism in terms of the pace of changes, it
favours social rhythm which, according to White, can be achieved through
parliamentary debates, enhanced educational process, and electoral contests. In short,
the liberal considerably reveals the desirability to undergo the process of the change
with some preferable modus operandi or through selected means.

Again it is notable that the time-sense of liberalism is different from that of

conservatism, because the former imagines the utopia in the remote future and
 58

believes the improvement of the structure is possible in the future time as well.
Mannheim compares liberalism with conservatism: “Whereas for liberalism the future
was everything and the past nothing, the conservative mode of experiencing time
found the best corroboration of its sense of determinateness in discovering the
significance of the past, in the discovery of time as the creator of value” (211). It is
here obvious that the time orientation of liberalism and conservatism is apparently
different in nature. For liberalism, like radicalism, it is possible to study history
rationally and scientifically, since it emphasises the general trends or main drift of
development. Though the liberal envisions the utopian condition of the society in the
remote future, they deliberately refrain from adopting any “radical” means to bring
social change.

2.17.3 Radicalism

Unlike the previous two ideological implications conservatism and liberalism,

radicalism shares a belief of social transformation with anarchism through radical
means. Keeping the social change in view, White explains, “Radicals and Anarchists,
however, believe in the necessity of structural transformations, the former in the
interest of constituting society on new bases, the latter in the interest of abolishing
‘society’ and substituting for it a ‘community’ of individuals held together by a shared
sense of common ‘humanity’” (24 Metahistory). Hence, the core concern of the
radical appears to be the reconstruction of the structural relationships, for which the
fresh ideas inevitably provide the secure footing. As far as the pace of the change is
concerned, the radical does not deny the possibility of cataclysmic transformation,
because they “are inclined to be more aware of the power needed to effect such
transformations, more sensitive to the inertial pull of inherited institutions, and
therefore more concerned with the provisions of the means of such changes than are
the latter [the anarchist]” (24-25 Metahistory). It may be argued here that the means
of the social change seems to be more significant for the radical, whereas the
anarchist has less concern for it.

Now if we evaluate radicalism on the basis of the time orientation, it is

discernible that it reflects the immediate possibility of the achievable utopian
condition. Here White argues, “Radicals…are inclined to view the utopian condition
imminent, which inspires their concern with the provision of the revolutionary means
 59

to bring this utopia to pass now” (25 Metahistory). It is remarkable to note two points
here – first the revolutionary means and second, the urgency of anticipation of the
utopia. The radical, however, puts the stress on the immediacy of change of the social
order, they certainly differ in the preference of choices of the means that could
possibly help in achieving the utopian condition. Moreover, it is latent in radicalism
that it manifests a tendency towards the social transcendence, although anarchism is
considered to be the most socially transcendent ideological position among all four of
them. Though it is obvious that the radical and the liberal believe in a rational and
scientific historiography, the former always seeks to establish the laws of historical
processes and structures in the historical field. In addition to it, radicalism shows its
firm belief in the structural transformation in the social order through programmatic
destabilization of it.

2.17.4 Anarchism

It would not be much difficult to acknowledge the notion that anarchism is the
antithesis of conservatism to a great extent, since they considerably exhibit many
incompatible characteristic features between them. Further, those features can be
illustrated on various levels such as time-orientation, pace of the change in the
society, the tendency towards social congruence and social transcendence, the
desirability to seek the structural transformation, etc. On the basis of the social
transformation (while comparing with the radical it is quoted in the previous section),
the anarchist believes in the absolute transformation of the structural relationships of
the totality of the whole, because this ideological position refuses to conform to the
existing society per se and desires to substitute it with a community of individuals.
Thus, here the greater degree of the social change is seriously and radically advocated
by the anarchist, for it has, unlike all other ideological positions, the abolition of the
existing society as an important objective.

Now we can observe the time-sense of the anarchist who believe that the ideal
society which is the utopia, is achievable at any given time, provided the men should
exhibit the great potential for humanity. White explains it correctly:

Anarchists are inclined to idealize a remote past of natural-human innocence

from which men have fallen into the corrupt “social” state in which they
 60

currently find themselves. They, in turn, project this utopia onto what is
effectively a non-temporal plane, viewing it as a possibility of human
achievement at any time, if men will only seize control of their own essential
humanity, either by an act of will or by an act of consciousness which destroys
the socially provided belief in the legitimacy of the current social
establishment. (25 Metahistory)

It is here important to note that the anarchist’s utopia is supposed to exist beyond the
temporal plane and hence, the realization of the ideal society is more the matter of the
human will than of any given time constraints. By the same token, it can be argued
that anarchism is the most socially transcendent ideological position, although it must
be recognized that each of the ideologies represents a combination of elements of both
social congruence and social transcendence. Finally, like the radical, the anarchist also
envisions the pace of change as the cataclysmic transformation, but unlike the former,
it does not display much interest in the power and the means for bringing those
changes in the social order.

After discussing those four basic ideologies, it can be affirmed that their
differences are the matter of emphasis, not of the content. It is remarkable to note that
the consistently underlying theme that characterizes those ideologies is the ethical
consideration or choice of the historian who favours or is inclined to a particular
ideological position in writing of the historical work he has undertaken. At this point
it suggests that the discussion on the basic ideologies above is aimed neither to
underline their merits, demerits, and relative significance, nor to accentuate the
implied hierarchy among them, but it is directed to highlight the implication of those
ideologies in terms of their impact on history writing. White attempts to explain his
design regarding the historical knowledge that these ideologies try to impact upon:

I cannot claim that one of the conceptions of historical knowledge favored by

a given ideology is more “realistic” than the others, for it is precisely over the
matter of what constitutes an adequate criterion of “realism” they disagree.
Nor can I claim that one conception of historical knowledge is more
“scientific” than another without prejudging the problem of what a specifically
historical or social science ought to be. (26 Metahistory)
 61

In this context, White indicates the fundamental disagreement among either those
historians who accept history as scientific discipline or those who reject it in favour of
human sciences. He not only dismisses the idea of ranking different conceptions of
history on the basis of realism and scienticity, but also refuses to accept that his
purpose is to analyze them as projections of a given ideological position. He further
reveals his intention: “I am interested only in indicating how ideological
considerations enter into the historian’s attempts to explain the historical field and to
construct a verbal model of its processes in a narrative” (26 Metahistory). It is evident
that the historical work of a given period certainly manifests the impact of ideological
positions of that period in which they are written.

Now it would be appropriate to observe the role of the ideological implication

vis-à-vis the emplotment and the formal argument, for a historical work is bound to
reflect their combination in its composition. If a historian explains the historical work
by emplotting a set of events in a particular emplotment mode and by employing a
particular formal argument among them, it is imperative to discover the moral
implication in the relationship between the set of events used for the plot structure of
the narrative and the same set of events which is governed by that particular formal
argument. For instance, the emplotment of the historical narrative in the tragic mode
suggests that there are some laws that explain the reason to arrange that set of events
in a particular manner in that narrative, and those laws may be either of causal
determination or of putative laws of human freedom. Thus, it can be argued that the
ideological implication of the historical narrative follows the laws which decide
whether it is conservative or radical ideological position in the example mentioned
above. But it is important to note that historians cannot always prefer to combine a
certain emplotment, a formal argument and an ideological position at their will,
because each and every combination may not be feasible in the construction of a
narrative. Here an obvious problem of the combination appears and that in turn, gives
rise to another problem which is called by White the problem of historiographical
style.

2.18 Discovering Historiographical Styles

After discussing those three levels of conceptualization which provide

historians grounds for giving an explanatory effect in their narratives, White expresses
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a reservation about their combination in random and unsystematic manner. In fact, it

is called the problem of historiographical styles, since according to White, “a
historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment,
argument and ideological implication” (29 Metahistory). In order to ascertain the
nature and validity of such combination at different level in writing history, he uses a
term that is called the elective affinity. In other words, the combination of those
levels is not indiscriminate in a given work, but “the elective affinities,” White writes,
“are based on the structural homologies which can be discerned among the possible
modes of emplotment, argument and ideological implication” (29 Metahistory). White
provides the graphic representation of those affinities that is given below:

Mode of Emplotment Mode of Argument Mode of Ideological

Implication

Romantic Formist Anarchist

Tragic Mechanistic Radical

Comic Organicist Conservative

Satirical Contexualist Liberal

Though White prescribes the tentatively valid combinations here, at the same time he
suggests that these combinations should not necessarily be considered compulsory in
all cases. The justifiability of a particular and valid combination from among these
modes is affirmed through illustrations: for White the comic mode of emplotment is
not compatible with the mechanistic argument and for the same reason, the radical
ideology is inconsonant with the satirical emplotment. On the other hand, he points
out that the prescribed combinations can deliberately be neglected by the historian
through “the dialectical tension which characterizes the work of every master
historian usually arises from the effort to wed a mode of emplotment with a mode of
argument or a mode of ideological implication which is inconsonant with it” (29
Metahistory). Hence, the structural grid of White provides historians the valid base to
gain a desired explanatory effect, but he also favours a scope for digression from the
formulated structural homology.
 63

Further, it is remarkable to note that the gradual development of the

dialectical tension consistently leads to a coherent vision of the structure of the
historical account which the historian deals with. This attempt to observe coherency
and consistency in the composition of the historical work motivates him to innovate a
particular stylistic characteristic based on some grounds which are considered to be
poetic and linguistic in nature. The significance of poetic and linguistic attribute is
manifest in the process of prefiguration of the historical field: prefiguring means to
create a mental perception before the historian commences to analyse the data of that
field. For the historical narrative is a verbal structure of a specific segment of the
historical field, its composition essentially requires the linguistic act upon which the
entire structure is enacted. Here it is necessary to mention that the poetic act cannot be
distinguished from the linguistic act, because an interpretation of the historical field
necessitates to classify discernible elements and figures that are essentially poetic in
nature. Thus, this interrelationship between the poetic and linguistic act considerably
impacts and defines explanations of the historical account on the levels of emplotment
and argument. Now the historian encounters the problem in distinguishing different
elements – lexical, grammatical, syntactical – of the field, because only after
identifying those elements of configuration he starts to interpret how their relationship
and transformation determines meaning and explanation in the construction of the
historical narrative. In short, the task of the historian is not only to discover the
linguistic protocol that inevitably serves the vehicle for prefiguration of the data of the
historical field, but he also makes use of it in providing explanation and representation
in his narrative.

Now it is appropriate to highlight the relationship between the preconceptual

linguistic protocol and the act of prefiguration, since they are mutually interrelated in
the way that demonstrates how the historical account as verbal model represents the
data of the historical field. It is generally considered that in order to avoid the
unambiguity in the perception of the structure of events of the past, the historian
totally relies on the verbal structure, because the documentary records of the historical
field are inadequate to provide such unambiguous image. Thus, the act of
prefiguration is necessarily required for the structure of the narrative out of the past
events and the nature of this act is properly explained by White here:
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In order to figure ‘What really happened’ in the past, therefore, the historian
must first prefigure as a possible object of knowledge the whole set of events
reported in the documents. This prefigurative act is poetic inasmuch it is
precognitive and precritical in economy of the historian’s own consciousness.
It is also poetic insofar as it is constitutive of the structure that will
subsequently be imaged in the verbal model offered by the historian as a
representation and explanation of ‘what really happened’ in the past. (30-
31Metahistory)

Hence, the entire prefigurative process is characterized by the poetic act which
actually precedes the formal analysis of the historical field. This process of formal
analysis necessarily explores the possibilities for explanatory strategy which the
historian uses to explain the field. However, it is important to point out that the
number of the explanatory strategies is obviously limited and there are four principle
explanatory strategies. White suggests that these four strategies correspond to the four
tropes of poetic language and these tropes serve as the categories for representation
and explanation in historiography.

2.19 Tropology

It is widely understood that tropes are basic and integral components of poetic
or figurative language and tropology is the use of such language. At this stage, White
values the role of tropes and proposes a theory that rules the historiography. For him,
“the theory of tropes provides us with a basis for classifying deep structural forms of
the historical imagination in a given period of its evolution” (31 Metahistory). Hence,
he recognizes four basic tropes namely metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony –
which are identified by the traditional poetics and modern language theory. White is
inclined to utilize the fourfold conception of tropes for distinguishing among different
stylistic conventions within a single tradition of discourse. Here his source of the
theory of tropes can be located in the formulation by Kenneth Burke in the appendix
of his A Grammar of Motives (1945) in which he calls them the master tropes that
represent the poetic or prosaic reality. Both Burke and White agree on the notion that
their emphasis is not only on highlighting the figurative usage of these tropes, but also
on the demonstration of their role in the discovery of the truth. While underlining the
use of the tropes, White believes, “They are especially useful for understanding the
 65

operations by which the contents of experience which resist description in

unambiguous prose representations can be prefiguratively grasped and prepared for
conscious understanding” (34 Metahistory). Thus, in the representation of the
historical imagination, these four basic tropes definitely characterize historiography as
far as the language and its deliberately designed usage are concerned. They are
described briefly in the following passages that foreground their function in the
indirect and figurative discourse, but at the same time, pay meagre attention to their
lexical meanings and literary usage.

2.19.1 Metaphor

In literary terms, it is a figure of speech that allows a thing to represent another

thing in terms of quality and attribute. Burke defines it in short, “Metaphor is a
device for seeing something in terms of something else” (503). Thus, we can state that
metaphor basically functions on the theory of the object-object relationships and these
two objects (or actions) are connected with some special attribute to make the
meaning manifest. White illustrates this trope and writes, “In Metaphor (literally,
‘transfer’), for example, phenomena can be characterized in terms of their similarity
to, and difference from, one another, in the manner of analogy or simile, as in the
phrase ‘my love, a rose’ (34 Metahistory). It is obvious that the two objects are
certainly characterized by incongruity and belong to two different realms which are
never identical. Further, White argues that irony, synecdoche and metonymy are kinds
of metaphor, but “they differ from one another in the kinds of reductions or
integrations they affect on the literal level of the meanings and by the kinds of
illuminations they aim at on the figurative level. Metaphor is essentially
representational, Metonymy is reductionist, Synecdoche is integrative, and Irony is
negational”24 (34 Metahistory). He explains metaphor further through the analysis of
the cited example quoted above.

White’s analysis of the example (my love, a rose) asserts that the rose
represents the loved one having full capacity to contain the quality of his or her love.
It is remarkable to note both the similarity and difference between two objects, for
they belong to two different realms. He explains, “The loved one is identified with the
rose, but in such a way as to sustain the particularity of the loved one while
suggesting the quality that she (or he) shares with the rose” (34 Metahistory). Thus,
 66

having read the phase in figurative manner, it can be said that the loved one is
represented by the rose, but he/she is neither reduced to a rose, (otherwise it would be
the case of metonymy), nor his/her essence is equated to that of the rose (if so it may
be an instance of synecdoche). Here, if the expression may be understood in the
implicitly negative manner and the explicit affirmation is accepted on the literal plane,
this can be considered irony. Metaphor is representational and like other tropes, it
promotes a unique linguistic protocol which is called the languages of identity.

2.19.2 Metonymy

As already pointed out, metonymy is a kind of metaphor, but they differ in

terms of their function they perform and the principle they follow. In tradition usage,
while metaphor is based on the principle of similarity and difference, metonymy
works upon the principle of association. Unlike metaphor which is based on the
object-object relationship, metonymy observes the part-whole relationship. Burke
explains its modus operandi, “The basic ‘strategy’ in metonymy is this: to convey
some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of corporeal and tangible” (506). Here
the relationship of the two objects or things is underlined by the association between
them, because the one object stands for the other and both of them are definitely
situated in the same domain. White slightly differs from Burke while the former
explains, “Through Metonymy (literally, ‘name change’), the name of a part of a thing
may be substituted for the whole, as in the phrase ‘fifty sails’ when what is indicated
is ‘fifty ships’” (34 Metahistory). This is clear here that both sail and ship belong to
the same realm and in turn, they are associated with each other in terms of the part-
whole relationship.

It is remarkable to underline that although metonymy contains a similar kind

of representation as metaphor does, they differ in terms of their belonging to the same
realms (metonymy) to different ones (metaphor). In course of illustration of the
phrase “fifty sails”, White explains it threadbare, “the term ‘sail’ is substituted for the
term ‘ship’ in such a way as to reduce the whole to one of its parts. Two different
objects are being implicitly compared (as in the phrase ‘my love, a rose’), but the
objects are explicitly conceived to bear a part-whole relationship to each other” (34
Metahistory). Here the representation of the ship through the sail should not be
understood that the latter stands for any quality that it shares with the former, but their
 67

relationship suggests that the ship is partially identifiable with a part of it (the sail)
without which they cannot function. Thus, it is argued that metonymy is reductionist
in nature, for it reduces the object of its representation (the ship) to its part (the sail).
But if the sail is used to represent a quality of the ship, then it would be a case of
synecdoche.

2.19.3 Synecdoche

Like metonymy, in synecdoche too the part stands for the whole, but their
relationship is different from the objects of representation in metonymy. While
defining synecdoche White states, “With Synecdoche, which is regarded by some
theorists as a form of Metonymy, a phenomenon can be characterized by using the
part to symbolize some quality presumed to inhere in totality, as in the expression,
‘He is all heart’” (34 Metahistory). In the analysis of this expression, he argues that
though it appears to be a metonymy on the surface level as the heart is used to
characterize the whole body of the individual, it is a synecdochic use if the term is
understood figuratively here. Nor the heart should be understood as a part of anatomy
whose function can be considered as much necessary as for the whole body, but the
representative of the quality that is possessed by the whole individual. He further
explains, “By the trope of Synecdoche, however, it is possible to construe the two
parts in the manner of an integration within a whole that is qualitatively different
from the sum of the parts and of which the parts are but microcosmic replications” (35
Metahistory). Hence, in the synecdochic usage, the relationship between two objects
is construed in terms of the microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship in which
integration of the individual parts creates an absolutely different whole.

This notion of the microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship is also reaffirmed

by Burke, since he acknowledges the importance of this relationship in defining the
synecdoche. He believes that the individual is treated as a replica of the universe, and
vice versa in this model, because “microcosm is related to macrocosm as part to
whole and either the whole can represent the part or the part can represent the whole”
(508). It is appropriate to point out that there is an integral relationship between the
two terms and the interchangeability is unrestrictedly allowed between them. While
analysing White’s example “He is all heart”, it is conspicuous that the literal reading
of the expression deliberately evades the effect which synecdoche is designed to yield
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and obviously proves to be a senseless statement. One the one hand, if this expression
is read metonymically, the centrality of the heart is emphasized in functioning of the
body as an organism and it demonstrates the reductionist quality. On the other, if it is
read synecdochically, a qualitative relationship is discernible between those terms that
contribute in making a whole. Taking the expression as the reference point, White
appropriately distinguishes between metonymy and synecdoche:

As a Metonymy, it suggests a relationship among the various parts of the body

which is understood in terms of the central function of the heart among those
parts. As a Synecdoche, however, the expression suggests a relationship
among the parts of the individual, considered as a combination of physical and
spiritual attributes, which is qualitative in nature and in which all of the parts
participate. (36 Metahistory)

Thus, it can be argued that in this context, in synecdoche the focus of attention is
concentrated on the quality such as generosity, compassion, etc., whereas in
metonymy, the qualitative aspect is absent and the heart serves as a symbol for the
body. Moreover, synecdoche is integrative as it observes the part-whole relationship,
whereas metonymy is reductionist as it shows the part-part relationship. It is
remarkable to note that if the same expression is uttered in a particular tone and voice
or if the person does not possess the suggested quality, it turns to be ironic statement.

2.19.4 Irony

As a distinct figure of speech, irony is considered entirely different from all

three above discussed tropes, since it refers to the mode of implying something that is
completely different or sometime opposite from what it appears at the surface level. In
other words, irony functions at dual levels – surface and deep; and the intended
implication is understated in the deep level in the discourse. According to White,
“Through Irony…the entity can be characterized by way of negating on the figurative
level what is positively affirmed on the literal level. The figures of the manifestly
absurd expression (catachresis), such as ‘blind mouth,’ and of explicit paradox
(oxymoron), such as ‘cold passions,’ can be taken as emblems in this trope” (34
Metahistory). It can be argued that the function of irony is usually conducted through
the two remarkable features: affirmation on the literal plane, but negation on the
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figurative level in order to provide a different significance. Thus, it is understood that

irony is essentially negational in nature, because the meaning it expresses is sharply
different from the meaning it actually implies. In short, irony indicates the perception
and awareness of a discrepancy and incongruity between words and their meaning,
between actions and their results, or between appearance and reality, and in all cases,
an element of absurdity and paradox can be identified.

Like Burke, White too argues that irony is “essentially dialectical, inasmuch as
it represents a self-conscious use of Metaphor in the interest of verbal-negation” (37
Metahistory). The term dialectical is used to signify the problematical nature of
language, for irony suggests latent idiocies in the language itself. He further explains
that the catachresis-literally means misuse- is the basic figurative tactic of irony. It
deliberately assigns the elements of absurdity and inadequacy to the figurative
language in order to characterize it, and in turn, the language-function acquires a dual
role of affirmation at surface level and negation at the deep one. White assesses the
aim of irony as writes, “The aim of ironic statement is to affirm tacitly the negative of
what is on the literal level affirmed positively, or the reverse. It presupposes that the
reader or auditor already knows, or capable of recognizing, the absurdity of
characterization of the thing designated in the Metaphor, Metonymy, or Synecdoche
used to give from it” (37 Metahistory). It should be underlined at this point that the
context in which the statement is related to, should be manifest or partially known to
the intended reader or audience for the reception of the implied message. It would be
appropriate to quote White explaining the relationship between irony as a unique
trope and the linguistic paradigm in which it operates:

The trope of Irony, then, provides a linguistic paradigm of a mode of thought

which is radically self-critical with respect not only to a given characterization
of the world of experience but also to the very effort to capture adequately the
truth of things in language. It is, in short, a model of the linguistic protocol in
which skepticism in thought relativism in ethics are conventionally expressed.
(37-38Metahistory)

Hence, it may be correct to state that irony is radically different form of metaphor and
its usage in the figurative language is brilliantly encoded in double-layered
statements. This can be well illustrated in satire which is the fiction form of irony.
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Now it is appropriate to mention that the irony is not necessarily used to represent one
ideological position pitched against another, but sometimes it appears to be
transideological. If it can be used to defend the status quo proposed in the
conservative or liberal ideological positions, it can also offensively be used by the
anarchist and radical to oppose the liberal and conservative utopian state. But it would
not be the case with other three basic tropes-metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche.

After discussion of these four poetic tropes in detail, it is certainly affirmed

that their role in the composition of the historical work is significant, because the
making of a historical narrative copiously relies on the language through which its
verbal structure is conceived properly. In other words, the theory of tropes provides a
mode of characterizing the different weltanschauung (worldview) of the historical
thinking of a particular period of history. Along with the three modes of
conceptualization of the explanatory strategy – emplotment, formal argument and
ideological implication, tropology is considered a significant addition to them in
connection with the historiographical style. The entire theory of explanation of the
historical work considerably reflects the framework of structuralism which serves as
the foundational model for White. The subsequent section will be devoted to the
discussion on acceptance and rejection of White’s theoretical framework of
historiography by his fellow historiographers and his critics of intellectual history.

2.20 Reception and Rejection of Hayden White

In the contemporary historiographical traditions, White certainly holds a

significant position, for his theory is widely acknowledged, received and practiced by
the contemporary historiographers across the world. The reputation of White certainly
rests upon his magnum opus Metahistory, because its publication was a watershed
event that shaped the philosophy of history of the twentieth century and continues to
influence historiography even after four decades. In the introduction of Philosophy of
History after Hayden White (2013) Robert Doran writes:

Though White’s thought is certainly not reducible to Metahistory – three

subsequent collections of essays amplified, developed, and recalibrated the
ideas put forth in his magnum opus (a fourth volume, published in 2010,
brought together White’s major uncollected essays spanning his entire career)-
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his contribution to the philosophy of history genre is generally considered to

be his 1973 tome. (1)

It is appropriate to reaffirm the significant impact of extensive writings by White is

recognizable in the manner he redefined the concept of philosophy of history on the
one hand, and to take into account his profound interventions in historiography which
continue to have far-reaching effects in diverse areas inquiry on the other. His
contributions in Anglo-American tradition of philosophy cannot easily be pushed
away, since he deserves the credit to revolutionize “the philosophy of history,
transforming a highly specialized and rather arcane subject into a topic of the central
concern of the humanities” (Doran 2). Here it is pertinent to point out the paradigm
shift in the perspective of White which is manifest through the range of his writing-
especially later writing- that demonstrates a major transformation from a theorist of
historical writing to a theorist of historical narrative and representation.

The trajectory of White’s works reveals his position among the theorists of
historical studies, though his works have been controversial, eliciting a mixture of
both scorn and admiration. His initial books such as Metahistory and Tropics of
Discourse are considered to be standard reading in the courses on historiography and
historical methodologies. Here it is possible to indicate the transformation in the
professional career that he underwent in terms of themes and areas of interest in his
later works such as The Content of the Form and Figural Realism, for these works
have been influential in literary studies and other fields as well. White’s proposition
that the past is invented or imagined rather than found, was well received by the
historiographical and narrative theorists like Louis O Mink, F R Ankersmit, Alun
Munslow, Keith Jenkins, and others, because for the first time it was claimed that
history does not conform or correspond to a pre-existing narrative or story. In other
words, this group of scholars are not in consonant with the idea of the historian’s
discovery of the story, but they believe that the historical narrative endows itself and
the past with meaning. After such a shift in postmodern and poststructuralist
historiography, Alun Munslow proposes a new school of history which is called
deconstructionist history25, for it is considered different from the previous schools of
history which he calls reconstructionist and constructionist history. Thus, White’s
scholarship in narrative historiography continues to influence the contemporary
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school of historical thought, but at the same time it is correct to mention that his
theory is challenged and rejected by those historians who endorse the non-narrative
and anti-narrative history which is chiefly based on facts and is considered “proper
history.” In short, White is considered to be the foremost and self-reflexive
practitioner of postmodern historiography.

On the other hand, many historians, historiographers, philosophers of history

and scholars contend that White’s theory of history writing has received many
criticisms in the last thirty years, for his structuralist method in historical discourse
can be challenged. On the one hand, historians have dismissed White’s relativism
which claims that the historical knowledge, truth and morality exist in relation to
culture, society, or historical context and are not absolute, literary theorists and
intellectual historians have criticized his formalist methods. In his article “Hayden
White’s Critique of the Writing of History” Wulf Kansteiner argues that, “At least
until recently White’s has remained a structuralist project, the displacement of
meaning from the level of referentiality to a level of secondary signification, in this
case the underlying narrative structures of historical discourse” (274). He also argues
that there is a rejection of White’s limitation of interpretative choices of the historical
work as he formulates in Metahistory which “proposes a systematic study of the
figurative aspects in historiographical writing in order to reveal the preconceptual
layers of historical consciousness with the very structure of the historiographical text”
(Kansteiner 277). It is important to note that Kansteiner in his article surveys White’s
all major works and presents a systematic counter to the latter’s important
historiographical formulations. Moreover, Kansteiner attempts to revert the historical
discourse to the realistic history which deliberately demonstrates the prominence of
factual data and the elimination of literary elements from history and its writing.

Obviously Kansteiner has a series of differences on White’s theory of

historiography and those differences range from the rejection of narrative
historiography to the dismissal of the aesthetic elements in historical discourse. His
attempt to reveal the inherent deficiencies and flaws in White’s formulation relies on
the ideas from a rich tradition of historical writings by prominent historians,
historiographers, and philosophers of history and writing of the literary theorists as
well and those writings, in turn, pose many challenges to White who tries to encounter
 73

them in many subsequent articles and books. The sharp points of Kansteiner’s
criticism for White are too strong to be neglected here:

For the average historian White’s name symbolizes the use of unnecessary
theoretical jargon, a debilitating relativism, and the denial of evidence and the
possibility of realistic representation in history. Historians have thus rarely
taken notice of the development of White’s thought, be it his defence against
most recent attempts to introduce a more flexible terminology and to rethink
the question of referentiality. (286)

Although these disagreements really appear to be serious in nature, they are certainly
addressed in White’s body of writings that followed the publication of Kansteiner’s
article in 1993. White’s development as a theorist of historiography is reaffirmed by
his two later books – Figural Realism (2000) and The Fiction of Narrative (2010)
which enable him for proper defence to his position as a philosopher of history and as
an advocate of the narrative history in the contemporary historical studies. His ideas
and theory are further perpetuated by a school of historians, literary theorists,
historiographers and scholars from other fields as well and this continuation is
ubiquitously reflected and proved through a body of writings on him.

2.21 Conclusion

Since the professionalization of history by Ranke in the late nineteenth

century, the tradition of historical studies has undergone a tremendous vicissitudes
and metamorphosis till the present day. The significant surge of theories in
historiography and philosophy of history is strongly witnessed with the arrival of a
host of theories in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities. This
interaction, dialogues and intersection of theories from various disciplines evidently
led to the transformation in perspectives of historians and historiographers in the
recent past. Thus, the influence of postmodernism and poststructuralism is discernible
in the contemporary historical discourse and thus, the rise of Hayden White as a
prominent philosopher of history can be considered as an outcome of such
development in the historical studies. Further, a vast body of writings on White
proves his continuing relevance in the study of various disciplines of different natures.
 74

It is noticeable that the changing trends of history have been accommodated in

the recent historical discourse and its professionalized historical scholarship is bound
to witness the ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Here, the process
of destabilization of the traditional historical imagination is marked with the growing
impact of the newly emerging social sciences and the humanities on history writing,
for the base of historical research and writing started witnessing a great
transformation since the Second World War. The pre-eminent intellectual historians
like Georg Iggers and Keith Jenkins in their books Historiography in the Twentieth
Century (2012) and Re-thinking History (1991) respectively, have attempted to
highlight the challenges faced by the discipline of history in postmodern era, because
the postmodern ideas forced a re-evaluation of the relationship of historian to their
subject and questioned the very possibility of objective history. Whereas Iggers
examines the metamorphosis in the nature of historical studies and traces the basic
assumptions that inform history in the twentieth century, Jenkins reiterates the idea of
narrative history that is greatly influenced by literary theory in making the meaning of
the past. Thus, the theory of historiography by White provides an avenue to analyse
the text in the broader contexts and creates a wide scope for more than one
perspective on history and historiography.

2.21.1 Hayden White’s Narrative History and the City Narrative

The whole idea of studying White’s theory of historiography is motivated with

the objective of its application in the study and analysis of the texts that are selected
for my research project. Those select texts of nonfiction deal with the city narratives
in which the models of the historical narrative are integrated in their composition.
Hence, the ideas and the theoretical framework of White’s historiography would be
applied to analyse, explore and discuss the texts in order to discover the meaning(s) of
those narratives in them. Those select texts are primarily historical narratives of two
metropolitan cities of India – Delhi and Mumbai, and White’s formulation is
accommodated to unearth interpretations and insights of those city narratives. It
would be fitting to study those Delhi’s and Mumbai’s narratives in the light of
historical methodologies in White’s narrative history, for they are published after
1980s. But before launching into the case studies of those two cities, it would be
imperative to discuss the origin, evolution and development of the city per se. Thus,
 75

the forthcoming chapter is devoted to discuss the city as an entity and its progression
in the course of history.

***
 76

1
From W H Walsh’s An Introduction to Philosophy of History. (16)
2
Here two writers are to be quoted. First, Collingwood defines, “History is a Greek word, meaning
simply an investigation or inquiry” (The Idea of History, 18-19). Second, M I Finley, who says,
“History in its root sense means inquiry” (Introduction to The Greek Historians, 1). But the English
word “history” has its cognates in other European languages such as “histoire” in French and
“Geschichte” in German.
3
More vibrant and suitable definition in this context can be found in The Greek Historians (1959, 80)
by M I Finley who explains what a myth is and how it was associated with history in the ancient time.
He asserts, “Myth serves admirably to provide the necessary continuity of life, not only with the past
but with nature and the gods as well. It is rich and vivid, it is concrete and yet full of symbolic
meanings and associations, it explains institutions and rites and feelings, it is instructive- above all, it is
read and true and immediately comprehensible. It served the early Greeks perfectly” (“Introduction” 3).
Besides the Greek epics were also considered a contribution to quasi- history that became manifest in
the epic tradition of Greek poets like Homer.
4
According to Oxford Dictionaries (online edition), theogony means the genealogy of a group or
system of gods. But it is an eponymous poem by Hesiod describing the genealogy or birth of Greek
gods.
5
The point where Thucydides distinctively differs from Herodotus is the evidence in history writing,
according to Collingwood. Collingwood enumerates four characteristics of history viz. a) scientific, or
begins by asking questions, b) humanistic, or asks questions about things done by men in determinate
times in the past, c) rational, or bases the answers which it gives to its questions on grounds, namely
appeal to evidence; and d) self-revelatory, or exists in order to tell man what man is by telling him what
man has done. Herodotus misses the third characteristic (The Idea of History, 18).
6
This book covers the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta from 431 to 404 BC, with
a temporary but nominal truce for seven years in the middle. Thucydides, in his late twenties, decided
to write history of this war when it broke out.
7
Apologetics is the verbal defence of the Faith, for example by dispelling inaccurate stereotypes or by
re-presenting doctrine in language that is more accessible to non-believers. The goal of apologetics is
to persuasively answer honest objections that keep people from faith in Jesus Christ (Theopedia).
8
The annals are the concise form of historical representation and present the records of events year by
year. But they fall short of history as they lack the social centre. As Hayden White puts it, “The annals
do not conclude; they simply terminate” ( The Content of the Form, 8). He further says, “The chronicle
is like the annals but unlike the history, does not so much conclude as simply terminate…The
Chronicle typically promises closure but does not provide it…” (16).
9
Primarily a mathematician and philosopher, Descartes put the natural science on the front and history
on the side. His historical skepticism, according to Collingwood, adumbrates four points –historical
escapism, historical pyrrhonism, anit-utilitarian idea of history and history as fantasy-building (60).
According to this historiography, history was based on the written authorities, but the historians were
applying the critical methodology by questioning those authorities.
10
The term is the English translation of the Italian work of Vico. It is called Scienza Nuova , the
original title of the book published in 1725. It is an influential work in the philosophy of history.
Hayden White is much influenced by Vico.
11
This oft quoted German remark is roughly translated as “as it really/actually happened.” But Felix
Gilbert sees inadequacy in such translation, especially the word eigentlich. He believes that, “The term
eigentlich is of such an opaque character that all of these translations seem possible. Thus the exact
meaning of the statement seems uncertain, and this explains why the same statement could serve
different, contradictory interpretation” (“Historiography: What Ranke Meant.”, 394).
12
It is philosophy of science that believes that knowledge is derived from the data of experience and
that excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations. In short, it is a system of knowledge.
13
Historical Materialism is the application of Marxist science to historical development. The
fundamental proposition of historical materialism can be summed up in a sentence: “It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their
consciousness” (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [Sources:
www.marxist.com and www.marxists.org ]).
14
This is a loose translation of Lucien Febvre’s aphorism , ‘Histoire science du passé, science du
présent’. It can be compared with the Ranke’s dictum, ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’.
15
This is an English translation of Ecrits sur l’Histoire (1969).
16
Etymologically romance is a Latin word that came into English language through French. It literally
means “the speech of the people” or “the vulgar tongue” in French and “written in vernacular” in Latin.
 77

It should be understood as the counter genre of the standard form in Latin or French. Historically it is
found in the Greek literature. But it was brought to English during the French rule and hence became
popular in the Middle Ages and later during the early modern period of English literature. Geoffrey
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is a good example of the romance.
17
The classic definition of Aristotle is still considered superior in which he describes tragedy as “the
imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself.” Tragedies of
Greek dramatists like Aeschylus and Sophocles and English dramatists like Shakespeare are great
examples. But here again the concern of Hayden White is focused on the process of the plot structure.
18
The term diremption can be understood in the contrast of another word redemption. White argues
that if the Romance is the drama of redemption, the Satire is the precise opposite of it.
19
The nomological-deductive argument follows the law of the logic in which we have a syllogism with
the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion. The major premise contains the putatively
universal law of causal relationship, the minor one consists of the boundary condition within which the
law is applied and the conclusion drawn by deducing from the above two premises. The explanations of
the events in the story are provided by the nomological-deductive arguments. This kind of principle is
mostly applied in the physical and natural sciences.
20
While Pepper sets for his root-metaphor theory and examines six world hypotheses viz. animism,
mysticism, formism, mechanism, contextualism, organicism. Out of these six hypotheses, White
dropped first two and chose last four to formulate his historiographical theory.
21
Pepper explains the root metaphor theory in this way, “A man desiring to understand the world looks
about for a clue to its comprehension. He pitches upon some area of commonsense fact and tries if he
cannot understand other areas in terms of this one. This original area becomes then his basic analogy or
root metaphor” (91). In other words, a root metaphor is a commonsense conceptualization of a domain,
in accordance with which categorical concepts have been constructed.
22
Form is the characteristic of the Platonic philosophy. Form should be considered to be similar to the
concept of idea of which Plato claims to be original.
23
Iain MacKenzie writes in his essay “The Idea of Ideology” that “…all ideologies, of whatever hue,
embody an account of social and political reality and an account of how that reality could be
bettered…Every ideology…embodies an account of the basic elements and core dynamic that
constitute and propel social and political life” (Political Ideologies: An Introduction by Robert
Eccleshall et al. 2). But White has used the concept in different manner, for he does not accept ideology
either as a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class or as a set of false ideas
which help to legitimate a dominant political power.
24
Burke has four different names for the master tropes. He believes that the literal or realistic
application of the four tropes go by a set of different names. He calls metaphor as perspective,
metonymy as reduction, synecdoche as representation and irony as dialectic. (503)
25
Alun Munslow’s Deconstructing History (1997) demonstrates how the established historical writing
in the postmodern and poststructuralist time can be contested. He devotes one chapter on Hayden
White.
 73

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