Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the structure of a historical text

Abstract

The subject of this research is the historical writing technique, which allows creating convincing images of the past. The goal of this article is ti analyze the structure of texts written by the historians and covering the period from antiquity to the XXI century. The theoretical framework consists of the idealistic approach towards history developed by the author. This article is first to examine the structure of texts written by the prominent historians of the past, such as Herodotus, Nestor, Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, and some historians of the XX – XX centuries from the perspective of idealistic approach and the use of quantitative methods. For comparison, analysis is conducted on the literary texts of A. S. Pushkin and V. S. Pikul dedicated to historical themes. The article employs content analysis, structural analysis, and terarchical cluster analysis of the texts on the basis of their structure. This revealed that the structure of these texts consists of the factual and theoretical statements, where the firs prevailed until the mid XX century. The use of cluster analysis allowed building a matrix of similarity of the works. The main method of creating convincing historical text lies in selection and interpretation of the the facts in accordance with the dominant worldview or a widespread historical concept. Facts are subordinated to the theory and confirm the fundamental ideas and historical concepts, as well as depict a convincing image of the past. The conducted analysis indicates that theory plays the key role in creating a convincing historical text, while facts are secondary; no significant impact of historical methods is revealed. The major difference between the analyzed historical and literary texts consists in the fact that there is no theory in the literary works.