Rhetoric and Aesthetics of History

Historians normally do not look at the output of their work as literature but as a result of academic skill and endeavor. In remarkable opposition to this opinion, recent trends in the theory of history stress the poetical and rhetorical character of historiography -precisely the character generally overlooked in the self-awareness and self-understanding of most professional historians. There is a good deal of postmodernism in the quest for rhetoric and aesthetics of historiography, because the modernity of historiography is defined by its academic or in a broader sense of the word -by its scientific character. And it is a widespread and deep-rooted opinion of academic historians, and of postmodernist theoreticians of history as well, that this scientific character is the opposite of rhetoric and aesthetics. In the following argument I would like to show that this contrast between the postmodernist understanding of historiography as rhetorical and the modernist scientific approach to historical knowledge leads us only to onesided views of historiography.I Ranke's work is a good example of the fact that rhetoric and aesthetics can be mediated with rationality, which defines the academic or scientific character of historical studies. Ranke is known for both aspects of historiography: his work represents the new academic standard, won by a process of scientification in the humanities since the late eighteenth century, and at the same time it represents a new literary quality of history writing, which makes it an integral part of the prose literature of the nineteenth century. We can look at it as a document of a scientified historiography and at the same time as an important part of the so-called narrative realism. So it seems to be worthwhile to confront Ranke's historiography with the postmodern question of the rhetorical principles of historiography on the one hand, and not to overlook the modernity of historical thought on the other, which historical studies realizes by its methodical rationality

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Literature · Rhetoric · Theology · Central European national history · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography

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