[DOWNLOAD] "Introduction: The Form of the Content of the Form (Essay)" by Brian Attebery * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

📘 Read Now     📥 Download

eBook details

• Title: Introduction: The Form of the Content of the Form (Essay)
• Author : Brian Attebery
• Release Date : January 22, 2010
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 52 KB

Description

HISTORY IS A TALE WE TELL OURSELVES ABOUT THE PAST, BUT THERE IS NO past, not here, not now. There is only the present, including the odd fragments from the wreck of the past that have washed ashore around us. We look these over, we read the words inscribed on some of the pieces, we guess at the gaps, and we construct a story. And then we do it all over again, for the present in which the tale was told is now itself part of the past and has to be wrapped into the narrative. Fans of Hayden White will recognize two thirds of my title. His pioneering work of metahistory, The Content of the Form, invited historians to look at the way they typically present their findings, as narratives. Taking his cue from Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, in which Marx claimed that history repeats itself, but the second time around turns tragedy into farce, White asked who chooses these modes of tragedy and farce. Is it history, revealing its true shape, or is it the historian who must have a story to tell and can only do so in the forms provided by culture? In either case, forms are not empty vessels. They already hold something, before any facts are poured in: a sketch of a plot, a handful of character roles such as "hero" and "antagonist," a desired outcome, a logic of cause and effect. Such contents are meaningful. They sort information into clusters and make certain facts stand out and others recede into the background. They tell us what an ending is, and where to look for new beginnings.

Free Download "Introduction: The Form of the Content of the Form (Essay)" PDF ePub Kindle