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Hayden White
By Herman Paul
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This new book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White's thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White's core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present. Starting with White's medievalist research and youthful fascination for French existentialism, Paul shows how White became increasingly convinced that historical writing is a moral activity. He goes on to argue that the critical concepts that have secured White's fame – trope, plot, discourse, figural realism – all stem from his desire to explicate the moral claims and perceptions underlying historical writing. White emerges as a passionate thinker, a restless rebel against scientism, and a defender of existentialist humanist values.
This innovative introduction will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities, and help develop a critical understanding of an increasingly important thinker.
Book Actions
Start ReadingBook Information
Hayden White
By Herman Paul
Description
This new book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White's thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White's core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present. Starting with White's medievalist research and youthful fascination for French existentialism, Paul shows how White became increasingly convinced that historical writing is a moral activity. He goes on to argue that the critical concepts that have secured White's fame – trope, plot, discourse, figural realism – all stem from his desire to explicate the moral claims and perceptions underlying historical writing. White emerges as a passionate thinker, a restless rebel against scientism, and a defender of existentialist humanist values.
This innovative introduction will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities, and help develop a critical understanding of an increasingly important thinker.
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Reviews
So much has been written about Hayden White and his linguistic turn, what else is there to add?, you can think. The great merit of this intellectual biography is that it shows very well the evolution in White's thinking, and therefore also that he stands for a lot more than just the "linguistic turn" or the tropology of his magnum opus "Metahistory" (1973 ). Herman Paul is trying to rehabilitate White against the already several decades of attacks on his narrativism and relativism. He shows that White did not make any statement about the narrativistic structure of reality (like followers like Mink or Ankersmit did), he did not intend to make any metaphysical or even epistemological statements at all. According to Paul, White only wanted to expose that each story gives an incomplete construction of reality and depends upon certain formal requirements, which he summarized in his famous 'tetralogy of the tropics'. At the same time, Paul admits that there is a fair amount of inconsistency in White's thinking, that he sometimes went too far in his fierce polemics, and occasionally gave in to adventures (his flirtation with structuralism, for example), which he had to review afterwards. In short this book certainly is a kind of apology, with inherent sympathy for the research topic, but also some critical distance.
Rating: 3