IH 0851 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Sophocles, King James Version, Social System

• School: Temple University
• Department: Intellectual Heritage
• Course: IH 0851
• Professor: Andrew Mossin

Document Summary

Narrative: for hayden white, a narrative has the common features of a story (e. g. beginning, middle, end; plot, characters, etc. ). A narrative is always a retelling of something constructed by a storyteller. Narrativize: this is to impose upon real events or fictional ones the form of a story (e. g. beginning, middle, end) and to select what is told and what is not told. In narrativizing, an author is also imposing a particular meaning or significance on the story being told. This is what white means by moralizing (see below). Discourse: the dictionary defines this term as written or spoken communication or debate. Thus, for white, when he refers to historical discourse, for instance, he is talking about the conversation among historians about a particular period or set of events. When used more broadly, discourse means any set of discussions or conversations among a particular group all of whose members speak the same language or discourse.