Transcript Historical Methods Literature and History

Literature and History
Historical Methods
Starting Questions
What did we do last week?
 History—what, 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 one’s mind//realism )

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.html )
Outline

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
History and Literature/Fiction
Historical methods in historiography and
in ‘traditional’ historical films and lit.
New Criticism and History
history vs. literature
在十九世紀前﹐歷史與文學同屬Literature．二者
向來就有糾葛﹐也有許多比較二者異同．
 如亞里斯多德《詩學》(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)
history vs. literature (2)
1.
2.
Overlapping in Realism, or traditional History
of ideas critics (e.g. Wordsworth as an
example of Romanticism)
“Non-essential relation” --New Criticism 
3. Both are ‘narratives,’ or ‘fictions’
(constructions) embedded in a
network of texts (or discourses). (p.
93)
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.China’s National
Birthday 10/10 ),
2. Documents (e.g.台湾地名沿革表 source),
records, reminiscences, (e.g. Making
Sense of the 60’s--later)
3. artifacts, buildings, (e.g. Romeo’s
and Juliet’s houses )
4. The Rep. of China was born in 10/10,
1911.
Historical methods
History as a broad field: Ref. WWW-VL:
HISTORY: METHODOLOGIES
http://vlib.iue.it/history/methods/methodologie
s.html

Studying history as ‘text’: (Textbook: pp. 94-)
1.
Generalization;
2.
Authoritative/neutral tone
3.
Tense –Simple past
4.
Collection and Interpretation of
“facts.”  how? (Ref. textbook 3-4)

Historical methods (2)—
SELECTION OF “FACTS”
History
synthesis
Methods
facts
methods
Past
evidence
1. The solid lines indicate supposed empirical
methods, and the dotted lines shows inference
according normal historical practice. (Berkhofer 141)
Principles of
methods or
methodology
Historical methods (3)—from life
to history”
Populated
unified story
History-aswritten
synthesis
facts
Postulated
unified flow of
events
(Berkhofer 145)
Past-aslived
evidence
Historical methods (3)—> Grand
Narrative(s) or History
Philoso
-phy of
History
“Great
Story” of
total past
Unified story of
Partial past
synthesis
facts
“Great
Past” of
totality
(Berkhofer 146)
Unified flow
of (some events)
evidence
Historical methods (3)—> Grand
Narrative(s) or History e.g.

E.g. 1 Textbook p. 94 denial of the Holocaust

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 Tyllyard’s The Elizabethan World
Picture a homologous view of
“the order”

• Great Past (the Germans during the wartime)
• Great Story (how “they” reject the past. . . )
Historical methods (4)—>
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)
“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.org/wiki/Historical_novel )
Walter Scott IVANHOE劫後英雄傳
 Reflects the movement and
totality of an age with characters
as ‘types.’
 Showing, personalizing, and
emotionalizing the past.

e.g.
Components of a “Historical”
Novel and Film
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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
Components of a Historical
Novel and Film e.g.
Making Sense of the 60’s4. In a Dark Time: one
clip
-- Is there a frame to this
segment?
-- How does it establish its
credibility?
-- Motifs? Plot? Narrative
perspective?
Components of a Historical
Novel and Film e.g. (2)
Textbook p. 101 -- Middlemarch
• Historical references?
• Total view?
A Postmodern Historical Film
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妹妹看MTV
1. How are the TV screen and its
audience presented in this video?
2. How is history presented? Is it
credible?
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?
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 (詩不可以
被翻譯)
Ref. textbook p. 96
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
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
New Criticism & History
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Intrinsic approach; the ‘text-and-the-textalone” 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)
New Criticism (2): ‘antihistorical’?
1.
2.
Against basing textual interpretation on the author’s
intention to. “Intentional Fallacy” (the author as the suncatalyst in the growth of a plant.)
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?
New Criticism (3): historicized
1.
2.
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．它提供一個簡便的教學方式應付不斷增長的學
生人數。分發一首短詩讓學生去感受﹐總比開設一
門世界優秀小說省事﹒
２．新批評認為詩是衝突心態的微妙平衡﹐是對立
衝突的公開調和；對於被冷戰的種種衝突學說搞得
無所適從而持懷疑論調的自由派知識份子﹐這種觀
點確實深富吸引力…表示你可以無所牽掛；詩所教
你的就只是『超然』」(Eagleton 67-68)﹒
Stop and Think:
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
"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’?
References:
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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.