Hayden White

This new book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White's thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White's core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present. Starting with White's medievalist research and youthful fascination for French existentialism, Paul shows how White became increasingly convinced that historical writing is a moral activity. He goes on to argue that the critical concepts that have secured White's fame – trope, plot, discourse, figural realism – all stem from his desire to explicate the moral claims and perceptions underlying historical writing. White emerges as a passionate thinker, a restless rebel against scientism, and a defender of existentialist humanist values. This innovative introduction will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities, and help develop a critical understanding of an increasingly important thinker.

Acknowledgments. Introduction: How to Read Hayden White. White's Achievement. White's Reputation. White's Questions. Reinterpreting White. Structure of the Book. 1. Humanist Historicism: The Italian White. The Papal Schism of 1130. White's Covering Law Model. "Ideology" or "Value Orientation". The Disenchantment of the World. From Historicism to Sociology. A Croce Partisan. Questions In/About History. 2. Liberation Historiography: The Politics of History. Why History? Choosing a Past. Strong Humanist Father Figures. Social Conditions of Freedom. In Defense of Metahistory. A Philosophy of Liberation. 3. The Historical Imagination: Four Modes of Realism. An Inverted Disciplinary History. Escaping the Ironist's Cage. Imagination: Thinking and Dreaming. A Manual of Tropology. Structuralist Linguistics. The Freedom of Imagination. White's Linguistic Turn. 4. The Power of Discourse: White's Structuralist Adventure. Three Modes of Comprehension. Figurative Language. Fictions of Factual Representation. Objectivism and Relativism. The Prison-House of Language. Getting Out of History. 5. Masks of Meaning: Facing the Sublime. The Content of the Form. Stories Are Not Lived But Told. Sublime Historical Reality. The Specter of Fascism. Modernist Anti-Narrativism. 6. Figuring History: The Modernist White. Modernist Events. Intransitive Writing. A Turning Point? Figural Realism. The Practical Past. Epilogue. Notes. Bibliography. Index.