Historical Methods

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Historical Methods

• Literature and History

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Starting Questions

• What did we do last week?
• Historywhat, why, how?
• History is not always progressive, nor developing
  in a linear fashion.
• History public vs. private facts vs.
  interpretation history vs. literature/fiction
• Why? ?
• Historical methods and Time travel
• (-- location a hotel
• -- erase the traces of the present
• -- hypnotize ones mind//realism )

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Why History?

• a memento to keep (and past to immortalize),
  and to be fixated by
• -- to learn from the past and broaden our
  horizons
• -- identity-construction, sense-making (for
  individuals), legitimating (for a group of
  people, or disciplines), ?textbook p. 92
• -- re-interpretation/re-vision ?
• relating it to our present world
• and selves.
• (Ref. http//www2.tntech.edu/history/whystudy.htm
  l )

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Outline

• History and Literature/Fiction
• Historical methods in historiography and in
  traditional historical films and lit.
• New Criticism and History

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history vs. literature

• ??????????????Literature.???????????????????.
• ????????(Poetics)?

"...the difference lies in the fact that the
historian speaks of what has happened, the poet
of the kind of thing that can happen.  Hence also
poetry is a more philosophical and serious
business than history for poetry speaks more of
universals, history of particulars." (ref.
textbook 96 Sidney)
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history vs. literature (2)

1. Overlapping in Realism, or traditional History of
   ideas critics (e.g. Wordsworth as an example of
   Romanticism)
2. Non-essential relation --New Criticism ?

3. Both are narratives, or fictions
(constructions) embedded in a network of texts
(or discourses). (p. 93)
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Historical Methods Starting Questions

• Which of the following are facts, or more factual
  than fictional, or apparently realistic but
  actually fictitious?

1. Dates (e.g. Rep.O.Chinas National Birthday
10/10 ), 2. Documents (e.g.??????? source),
records, reminiscences, (e.g. Making Sense of the
60s--later) 3. artifacts, buildings, (e.g.
Romeos and Juliets houses ) 4. The Rep. of
China was born in 10/10, 1911.
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Historical methods

• History as a broad field Ref. WWW-VL HISTORY
  METHODOLOGIES http//vlib.iue.it/history/methods
  /methodologies.html
• Studying history as text (Textbook pp. 94-)
• Generalization
• Authoritative/neutral tone
• Tense Simple past
• Collection and Interpretation of
• facts. ? how? (Ref. textbook 3-4)

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Historical methods (2)SELECTION OF FACTS
History synthesis Methods
facts Methods Principles of methods or methodology
facts methods Principles of methods or methodology
Past evidence methods
1. The solid lines indicate supposed empirical
methods, and the dotted lines shows inference
according normal historical practice. (Berkhofer
141)
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Historical methods (3)from life to history
Populated unified story History-as- written synthesis
facts
facts
Postulated unified flow of events Past-as-lived evidence
(Berkhofer 145)
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Historical methods (3)gt Grand Narrative(s) or
History
Philoso-phy of History Great Story of total past Unified story of Partial past synthesis
Philoso-phy of History facts
Philoso-phy of History facts
Philoso-phy of History Great Past of totality Unified flow of (some events) evidence
(Berkhofer 146)
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Historical methods (3)gt Grand Narrative(s) or
History e.g.

• E.g. 1 Textbook p. 94 denial of the Holocaust
• Great Past (the Germans during the wartime)
• Great Story (how they reject the past. . . )
• 2 Textbook p. 97 Mid-Victorian Britain
• Great Past (the Victorian Age) ? Great Story (of
  economic growth and progress)
• Underlying assumption,
• or philosophy?
• 3. Textbook p. 98 Tyllyards The Elizabethan
  World Picture a homologous view of the order

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Historical methods (4)gt History as Narrative

• life with plentiful events ? evidence ? fact
• ? synthesized into Story
• or, according to Hayden White,
• ? organized into a chronicle

? Story within beginning, middle and end Or
motifs (inaugural, terminating, transitional)
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Historical Novel and Film

• Definition A historical novel is a novel in
  which the story is set among historical events
  or, more generally, where the time the action
  takes place in predates the time of the first
  publication. It is a genre popularized in the
  19th century by artists classified as Romantics,
  and must be distinguished from the genre of
  alternate history. (source http//en.wikipedia.o
  rg/wiki/Historical_novel )
• e.g. Walter Scott IVANHOE?????
• Reflects the movement and
• totality of an age with characters
• as types.
• Showing, personalizing, and
• emotionalizing the past.

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Components of a Historical Novel and Film

• Frames at the beginning, the end, or the turning
  points
• narrative comments and mentioning of Facts,
  numbers, historical figures
• Credibility
• Documents -- Photograph, diary,
• letters,
• Witness -- First-person narrator,
• Embodiment Dramatization
• Themes
• Description
• Plot characterization

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Components of a Historical Novel and Film e.g.

• Making Sense of the 60s- 4. In a Dark Time one
  clip
• -- Is there a frame to this segment?
• -- How does it establish its credibility?
• -- Motifs? Plot? Narrative perspective?

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Components of a Historical Novel and Film e.g. (2)

• Textbook p. 101 -- Middlemarch
• Historical references?
• Total view?

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A Postmodern Historical Film

• ???MTV
• 1. How are the TV screen and its audience
  presented in this video? 
• 2. How is history presented? Is it credible?

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Stop and think

• What do you think about the different kinds of
  histories (the official, the personal, with
  evidence, historical novel, historical romance,
  biographies, etc. ) now? Are they trustworthy?
  Or in what ways can we learn from them?

• What is wrong with having a total view of
  history?

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New Criticism Major Views

• A poem is autonomous, with an ontological status.
  
• Intentional Fallacy,
• Affective Fallacy

• Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic
  truth) than science.
• Heresy of Paraphrase (???????)

Ref. textbook p. 96
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New Criticism Methodology (1) Poetry

• Parts
• Denotations, connotations
• and etymological roots
• Allusions
• Prosody
• Relationships
• Among the various elements

Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions
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New Criticism Methodology (1) Narrative

• Parts
• Point of view,
• dialogue,
• setting,
• Plot
• Characterization
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions
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New Criticism History

• Intrinsic approach the text-and-the-text-alone
  approach
• the poem as an organic whole
• Denying history?

If we see that any item in a poem is to be
judged only in terms of the total effect of the
poem, we shall readily grant the importance for
criticism of the work of the linguistic and the
literary historian. (Brooks qud McGann 6)
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New Criticism (2) anti-historical?

1. Against basing textual interpretation on the
   authors intention to. Intentional Fallacy
   (the author as the sun-catalyst in the growth of
   a plant.)
2. Basic assumption a good literary text should
   have a coherent meaning which can be universally
   felt by the writers and readers alike and which
   should not be changed by time.

Quote If we insist on relating the text
primarily to the context of its composition, we
are cutting it off from that relation to life
which is the relevant one. (Ellis qtd in McGann
8)
What do you think?
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New Criticism (3) historicized

• Necessary for the establishment of literary
  studies as an independent institute. (Cf.
  textbook 1 92-93)
• Problematic in the assumption of universal and
  stable meanings unchanged by context.

1.????????????????????????????????????????????????
???? 2.??????????????????????????????????????????
????????????????????????????????????????????????
???(Eagleton 67-68)?
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Stop and Think

• "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" -
  Napoleon B. Do you agree?
• How should we use history in our studies of
  literature? Or how do we define context?

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References

• McGann, Jerome, ed. Historical Studies and
  Literary Criticism. Univ of Wisconsin Pr
  Reprint edition 1986.
• Berkhofer, Robert. The Challenge of Poetics.
  The Postmodern History Reader. Ed. Keith Jenkins
  Routledge, 1997.