HISTORICAL SOURCES

AND

HISTORICAL
CRITICISM
 HISTORICAL
SOURCES
I. GROUPS OF SOURCES
II. TYPES OF SOURCES
III. REPOSITORIES
GROUPS OF SOURCES
HISTORICAL SOURCES ARE TANGIBLE REMAINS OF THE
PAST.
 GROUPS OF SOURCES
DOCUMENTS
Written or printed materials that have been produced in one
form or another sometime in the past.
 GROUPS OF SOURCES
NUMERICAL RECORDS
Include any type of numerical data either printed or handwritten
 GROUPS OF SOURCES
ORALS STATEMENTS
Include any form of statement made orally by someone.
 GROUPS OF SOURCES
RELICS
Any object whose physical or visual characteristics can provide
some information about the past.
 TYPES OF SOURCES
AN OBJECT FROM THE PAST OR TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE
PAST ON WHICH HISTORIANS DEPEND IN ORDER TO CREATE
THEIR OWN DEPICTION OF THE PAST.
 TYPES OF SOURCES
PRIMARY SOURCE
● Prepared by an individual who was a participant in, or a direct witness to,
the event that is being described.
● Includes first-hand information, such as eyewitness reposts and original
documents
● Advantage: directly address your topic and often provide information that is
unavailable elsewhere
● Disadvantage: may be too close to the subject, lacking critical distance.
: It is time consuming to prepare, administer, and analyze.
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, MEMOIRS, AND DIARIES

● An autobiography is an account of a person’s life written by

the same person.
● Memoir is a record composed from personal observation and
experience.
● A diary is a form an autobiography which records, in a
regular basis, the writer’s activities and reflections.
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
PERSONAL LETTERS, AND CORRESPONDENCE

● A personal letter is a type of letter that usually concerns

personal matters and is sent from one individual to another.
● A correspondence is a means of communication through an
exchange of letters with someone.
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
INTERVIEWS, SURVEYS, AND FIELDWORKS

● An interview is a one-on-one conversation where questions

are asked and answers are given.
● A survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific
data from a particular group of people.
● A field research or fieldwork is the collection of information
outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting.
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
WORKS OF ART AND LITERATURE

● Art and literature have symbolic statement of meaning.

● Paintings are form of visual art where paint or ink is used on a canvas
to depict an artist’s rendering of a scene or even of a non-
representational image.
● Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing
instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium.
● Literature is a body of written work such as poems and prose.
 TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
PHOTOGRAPHS AND POSTERS

● Photographs and posters illustrate past events as they

happened and people as they were at a particular time.

SPEECHES

● Speech is a form of communication in spoken language,

made by a speaker before an audience for a given purpose.
 TYPES OF SOURCES
SECONDARY SOURCE
● Document prepared by an individual who was not a direct witness to an
event, but who obtained his or her description of the event from someone
else.
● Includes secondhand information such as description of an event by
someone other than the eyewitness, or a textbook author’s explanation of
an event or theory
● Advantage: provide a variety of expert perspectives and insights
● Disadvantage: information may be colored by the writer’s bias or faulty
approach
 TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES
PERIODICALS

● Newspaper is a periodical publication containing written

information about the current events.
● Magazine is a periodical produced by professional writers and
editors for general reading.
● Journal is a periodical written by scholars for scholars for the
purpose of information.
 TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES
BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS

● A biography is a description of a real person’s life, including factual

details and stories from the person’s life.

LITERATURE REVIEWS AND FILM REVIEW

● Film review assesses a film’s overall quality and determine whether or

not it is worth watching.
● Book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed
based on the content style and merit.
 TYPES OF SOURCES
TERTIARY SOURCE
● Provide third-hand information by reporting ideas and details from
secondary sources
● Advantage: offers a quick and easy introduction to your topic
● Disadvantage: it may oversimplify or distort the topic and new
insights into the topic may be missed
 TYPES OF TERTIARY SOURCES
GENERAL REFERENCES

● Dictionaries, encyclopedia, almanacs, atlases, etc.

INTERNET SOURCES

● Crowd sources (Wikipedia, YouTube, etc.) and search sites

or search engine.
 REPOSITORIES
A PLACE, BUILDING, OR RECEPTACLE WHERE THINGS
ARE OR MAY BE STORED.
REPOSITORIES OF PRIMARY SOURCES
● LIBRARY: curated collection of sources of information and similar
resources, selected by experts and made accessible to a defined
community for reference or borrowing.

● ARCHIVE: an accumulation of historical records or the physical place

they are located.

● MUSEUM: an institution that conserves a collection of artifacts and

other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, and scientific importance.

● HISTORICAL SOCIETY: an organization dedicated in preserving,

collecting, researching, and interpreting historical evidences
REPOSITORIES OF PRIMARY SOURCES

Metropolitan Museum of Art Kapisanang Pangkasaysayan ng Pilipinas

National Archives at New York City New York Public Library

 HISTORICAL
CRITICISM
I. DEFINITION
II. EXTERNAL CRITICISM
III. INTERNAL CRITICISM
DEFINITION
OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM
 DEFINITION
Also known as the HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD, Historical
criticism is a branch of criticism that “investigates the origin of
text or source in order to understand the word behind the text.”

PRIMARY GOAL: to discover the text primitive or original

historical context and its literal sense.

SECONDARY GOAL: to establish a reconstruction of historical

situation of the author and recipients of the text.
 DEFINITION
In order for a historical source to be used as evidence in
history, basic matters about its form and content must be
settled.

TYPES OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM

EXTERNAL CRITICISM (investigates the documents’ form)
INTERNAL CRITICISM (investigates the documents’ content)
EXTERNAL CRITICISM
GENUINENESS OF THE DOCUMENT
 EXTERNAL CRITICISM
This type of criticism looks for the obvious sign of “forgery” or
“misrepresentation”. This type of criticism tests the authenticity
of the sources. It is interested in the writing styles of the
eyewitness and also analyzes the original manuscript
(autograph); its integrity, localization and the date it was
written. To ascertain if a particular data is fabricated, forge,
fake, corrupted or a hoax, that source must undergo the test of
authenticity.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
The FIRST STEP to test a source is to determine the date of
document to see whether it is anachronistic. Anachronism
means out of time or order, something that could not have
been there at that particular time. It could be a person, thing or
idea placed in a wrong time. Being able to spot anachronism is
important because it helps us test the reliability of a source. If
a source is unreliable then we probably shouldn’t use it.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
EXAMPLE
In Rizal’s allegedly first poem “Sa Aking Mga Kabata” where
we could find the term “kalayaan”, Rizal admitted that he first
encountered the word through a Marcelo H. Del Pilar’s
translation of Rizal’s essay “El Amor Patrio”. Rizal wrote this
essay in 1882 while the poem supposedly was written by him
in the year 1869.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
The SECOND STEP is to determine the author’s handwriting,
signature or seal. We can compare the handwriting of
particular author to his other writings. Obvious sign of forgery
includes patch writing, hesitation as revealed by ink blobs,
pauses in the writing, tremor causing poor line quality and
erasures. The act of writing however a skill is learned through
repetition until it becomes a habit. Thus, there is natural
variation in everyone handwriting.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
EXAMPLE
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
The THIRD STEP is by looking for the anachronistic style.
In this test we will examine idiomatic expression An idiom is an
expression, word or phrase that has a figurative meaning
conventionally understood by native speakers. When we say ‘break a
leg’ we all know that it means good luck.

We shall also examine the orthography used in the documents.

Orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes
norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks,
emphasis and punctuation.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
EXAMPLE
Early Tagalog System (taken from Doctrina Christiana,) Modern Filipino orthography

Ama namin, nasa Lan͠ gitca, Ypasamba Ama namin, sumasalangit Ka,

Mo ang N͠ galanmo. Mouisaamin ang Sambahín ang Ngalan Mo.

pagcaharimo. Ypasonor mo ang loob Mapasaamin ang kaharián Mo.

mo Dito sa lupa para sa Lan͠ git. Sundín ang loób Mo

Dito sa lupà, para nang sa langit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipino_orthography
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
The FOURTH STEP is looking for the anachronistic reference to
events.
For example, if the event cited in the document is prior to the actual
event, then the document must be forge or fake.

The FIFTH STEP is the provenance or custody of the document.

Provenance is the place of origin of earliest known history of
documents. It traces the roots of any source.
 TEST OF AUTHENTICITY
SEMANTICS AND HERMENEUTICS
Semantics is the linguistic study of meaning. In this test semantics
determine the meaning of the text and words of the source. We may
ask: is the meaning of the statements different from its literal
meaning?

Hermeneutics on the other hand is theory and methodology of

interpretation. Hermeneutics is more than interpretation or method
used when immediate comprehension fails. In historical criticism we
determine ambiguities which are a word or expression that can be
understood in two or more possible ways.
INTERNAL CRITICISM
ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THE DOCUMENT
 INTERNAL CRITICISM
This type of criticism looks for deeper or more intense study of
sources. Usually historians first apply external criticism before
undergoing the test of credibility because of internal criticisms
implicit character. It refers to the “accuracy of the content of a
document”. Internal criticism has to do with what the document
says. It investigates the content or substance of a document
and the author’s point of view. This type of criticism tests the
CREDIBILITY of the source.
 TEST OF CREDIBILITY
The FIRST STEP is the identification of the author.
It determines if the witness is reliable or if he is consistent by comparing
his other works.

In this steps historian also examine the mental processes of the

witness, if he is capable of telling the truth, or if he is mentally
challenge.

Finally, we will look for his personal attitudes, if he is telling something

beyond what he saw or bragging about it. Many historians use some
kind of rubric to test the credibility of the author.
 TEST OF CREDIBILITY
The SECOND STEP in testing the credibility of the eyewitness is
to determine the approximate date.
Example of this is again Rizal’s poem “Sa Aking mga Kabata”.
He wrote that poem when he is only eight years old and that
poem is with rhythm and meter. To think that when Rizal was 8
years old ,the primary education in the Philippines was non-
existent.
 TEST OF CREDIBILITY
The THIRD STEP in testing the credibility of the source is its
ability to tell the truth.
Historians examine how near an eyewitness is to the event.

Historian also look for the competence of the eyewitness. Basically they
look for the background of the author like education, health, age or
social status.

The last test for this step is the degree of the attention of the
eyewitness. Whether the sources witness the event only partly or if he
witnesses the event from the start to finish.
 TEST OF CREDIBILITY
The FOURTH STEP is the willingness to tell the truth.
If the eyewitness is coerced, forced or somebody threaten him
to tell something then his account is not valid. The eyewitness
wants to hide something for personal reason or sometimes
because of coercion.
 TEST OF CREDIBILITY
The LAST STEP is to look for corroboration (evidence which
confirms or supports a statement, theory, or finding). This
particular step rest upon the independent testimony of two or
more reliable sources. The words independent testimony must
be emphasize.
For instance, if the soldier who fought the battle, a general who
oversaw the battle and a doctor who treated those wounded
who fought the battle, all recorded the same fact or all agree
about an event, historians consider that event proven
CONCLUSION
OF THE DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSION
● Sources could be classified into four major groups namely: documents,
numerical records, oral statements, and relics
● There are three kinds of sources namely: primary sources, secondary
sources, and tertiary sources.
● Repositories of primary sources are: library, archive, museum, and
historical society
● Historical criticism investigates the origin of text or source in order to
understand the word behind the text.
● External Criticism refers to the genuineness of the documents a
researcher uses in historical studies
● Internal Criticism refers to the accuracy of the content of the document