Abstract
The first part of this essay (in particular, §§ 2 and 3) deals with the question of the form(s) of historical narration(s), while the second part (Section 4) is concerned with the historicity of literature and focusses on the issue of the historical knowledge provided by literary texts. The nature of both historical narration and historical understanding are central issues in historical studies today, and they have forcefully taken the academic stage after the so called “linguistic turn” in the humanities. So has a new perception of the interconnections between history and literature. The aim of this essay is therefore to provide an overview of some of the most recent salient positions in the debate over the two disciplines, with specific references to the works of P. Ricoeur, K. Pomian, Hayden White, and the concepts of “mise en forme” of historical narration, “marks of historicity”, “effects of narration”, and “emplotment”. The section devoted to the historicity of literature is developed with reference to G. Lukacs, J. Ranciere and J.-J. Lecercle, and proposes that literature provides a knowledge of history through its unique relationship to language (and therefore subjectivity), and the capacity of rendering the phenomenology of experience, i.e. what “it is like” for different subjects to live in a specific historical moment.
Published Version
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