history as rhetoric

[heresluck]

As requested by melymbrosia and way2busymom, the bibliography-in-progress about what, in the previous post, I referred to as "rhetorical theories of history." "History as rhetoric" or "the linguistic construction of history" might be better descriptions. Anyway

Comments

[vaznetti]

Browsing in... For many ancient historians (and I am among them) the issue of fictionality is a big one, because the ancient writers we use as our sources do not use their own sources in a way we easily recognize as history. A study of Tacitus must be at least as much about rhetoric as about history, to be convincing--or rather, it's easy enough to write about Tacitus solely from a rhetorical viewpoint, but impossible to write about him as a historian without confronting his rhetoric. There's a great deal of work done on the relationship of fiction to history, and thefictionality of history.

This relates only tangentially to the material you discuss because ancient historians and modern hostorians (modern in the Oxford sense) live in separate worlds, and don't engage much with theory of historiography. But I would suggest that you look at Keith Hopkins' book, A World Full of Gods as an example of why history is not fiction--the book tries to blur the two and ends up a failed, but telling, experiment. (His model is Emperor of

[heresluck]

This is very interesting; thank you.

As a non-historian, the question of the "fictionality" of history has always seemed a little overstated to me, particularly in modern history; I mean, come on, it's based in *something* verifiable, right? I tend to think of histories not so much as fictional as partial, in all possible senses of the word.

But maybe that's just hair-splitting lit-geekery. Heh.