HIST2312 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Cultural Anthropology, German Romanticism, Metanarrative
Week 7 HIST Lecture – Narrative
Storytellers of the World – the revival of narrative
Historians:
• Always tell stories and always have
• Make to be good, rigorous and well-supported in the historical process
• Elements of style and characterization
Key Proposition:
• A histoia a e satisfied i deelopig a stog ad auate aatie, ith a dash of
aalysis as euied
Narrative:
• Meaig to ko
• Close link between narrative, story and knowledge
• Narrative as a thing and a practise
• A style and approach
• A tue stoy aout the hua past – coherent with progression, characters with plot,
setting and interactions, have a purpose and be intelligent, must have an audience and
mean something
• A liteay style used y histoias to depit seuees of hage – built from fact,
illuiatio ito soe aspet of the past, a tuth about the past
• A at y hih a histoia asts the past i a patiula stoy fo – historian like a great
artist, writer or composer, able to express it to the audience
Types:
• Micro-narrative
• Master narrative
• Grand narrative
• Meta-narrative
Historians tell stories:
• Entertain
• Inform and instruct as part of a larger story
• Dramatic sequence
• Always have include them – history is narrative – implotment of the past
• Herodotus (broad and uses antidotes, novelistic) and Thucydides (narrow and more
disciplined to the truth, tightly controlled narrative of political action) – both pursue the
doubleness of history, tolerate uncertainty, plots to tell a story to convey a truth
Identity and collective memory:
• Inga Clendinen – Who owns the past? (how narratives work in forming an identity to the
past), construct own meaning to own lived experience, collective entities and only some of
them benign (have many uses), tense relationship, both preservers and critique,
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Document Summary
Storytellers of the world the revival of narrative. Historians: always tell stories and always have, make to be good, rigorous and well-supported in the historical process, elements of style and characterization. Key proposition: (cid:862)a histo(cid:396)ia(cid:374) (cid:272)a(cid:374) (cid:271)e satisfied i(cid:374) de(cid:448)elopi(cid:374)g a st(cid:396)o(cid:374)g a(cid:374)d a(cid:272)(cid:272)u(cid:396)ate (cid:374)a(cid:396)(cid:396)ati(cid:448)e, (cid:449)ith a dash of a(cid:374)alysis as (cid:396)e(cid:395)ui(cid:396)ed(cid:863) Types: micro-narrative, master narrative, grand narrative, meta-narrative. Rise of historical analysis: age of social science, problem-orientated history deep structures and large patterns, objections to narrative events, had to move on structural narrative vs analysis description. Looking to replace the story of events, did not usually lent to narrative. Macro-historians: shadow of ww1, search for meaning in grand unitary narratives, comparative, cyclical and speculative, uncovering of grand patterns, h. g. For and against: need more analysis, only storytellers then. Techniques: tuchman vision, expression and structure, the task of selection (cid:272)a(cid:374)(cid:859)t put i(cid:374) everything, tones and implications of narrative choice, arrangement, chronology and themes, maintaining the pace, points of view.
