Historians and the Evidence of Literature

Abstract

essay I want to appeal to historians to treat literature seriously. My argument will be that literary texts offer important and sometimes unique kinds of historical evidence, and that, by and large, the historical discipline has been curiously diffident about exploiting this evidence with vigor and confidence. Yet to take up such a theme, even in general terms, requires a formal apologia of sorts. The literature-and-history question is an old one, especially for literary scholars. The increasingly introspective mood of literary scholarship in recent decades has undermined the ebullient self-confidence about the autonomy of our undertakings and sent us scurrying across campus in search not merely of historians, but sociologists, psychologists, and even biologists. A recent compilation of essays published by the Modern Language Association, including a fine essay on Literature and History by the late Rosalie Colie, an eminent scholar with formal credentials in both history and English, gives some idea of the scope of the search as well as some suggestions of its promise.' There is a substantial bibliography on the literature-and-history question; and it is significant, even if entirely explicable, that practically all of it comes from the pens of literary scholars rather than those of historians.2 The literature-and-history question has maintained a certain urgency in the agenda of literary studies, and it has often been debated in a polemical context which has hardly been welcoming to outsiders. The burden of past debate inevitably weighs heavily upon any literary scholar who approaches the literature-and-history question, but it is