Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, by Hayden White

Abstract

Abstract Hayden White’s 1973 Metahistory tossed the entire concept of historical science out the window, claiming that historians are fundamentally artists who imbue historical action with aesthetic and ethical purpose. The book urged historians to grapple with whether and how their writing creates rather than reflects reality. It also celebrated the ethics and art of history-writing and diminished historians’ empirical claims. There were two receptions of White’s work: the first, amply documented, was among intellectual historians and others in humanities’ disciplines, especially literary theory; the second took place within the mainstream of the discipline and has received little attention. This essay assesses how mainstream historians’ reception of Metahistory unfolded from the 1970s, and with what consequences. Historians focused on White’s purported conflation of language and reality and neglected his argument about how and why historians resist theory. In so doing, he demonstrated—and the reception of his work demonstrates in turn—that historians most effectively resist theory when they seem most to engage it.