narrativism

In this work I deal with the relationship between narratology and historiography. In the 1970s especially due to H. White are applied literary patterns to the field of historiography. Nowadays with the benefit of hindsight it is possible to state that narratology didn't remain a domain of literary science which formed it but it has also found his position in other disciplines, including historiography. The focus of this contribution is the narratological analysis of Vespucci's letter Mundus Novus. Its final form points out cultural specifics of this historical period.

In this article, I propose a new interpretation of Hayden White's Metahistory. Instead of treating it as a classical text on historical narrativity, I argue that Metahistory should be read as an inquiry into ‘metahistorical prefigurations', that is, into the moral and ontological presuppositions underlying historical writing.

This article is an attempt to represent Hayden White's writing and teaching career in terms of Giambattista Vico's poetic logic and theory of the development of human consciousness, which passes through four distinct stages, proceeding from one to the next by way of turns (tropic transitions). Each stage corresponds to a trope, a kind of shifter: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. According to this pattern, culural life begins with metaphor and ends with irony, with a final return (ricorso) to metaphor.

There are several authors who point to the fact that some historical works pursue ideological goals. Hayden White, however, argues that all historical works possess certain ideological dimension. He claims that when historians represent and discuss particular actions, changes in the society, etc., they implicitly respond to the Kantian question „What should I (we) do?" and this is the foundation of the ideological aspect of history. In my paper I discuss White's point and drawing on Frank Ankersmit's account of historical representation I clarify how ideology may enter historical work.

In the second half of the 20th century a remarkable thing occurred in the area of philosophy of history. Several historians and philosophers of history ceased to discuss at that time popular topics of historical explanation and historical fact and instead they posed new questions focusing on the nature of historical work. They were interested mainly in the language used by historians, i.e. they began to study the rhetorical dimension of their work. The language was no longer considered to be a transparent instrument simply depicting pure historical facts.