Narrative versus Description in Historiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7932076 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laurent Stern (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 555 |
| Publication date | 1990-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/469125 |
| OpenAlex | W2329731895 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
public commotions they must tell a story. The thesis of this paper is that if historical accounts are limited to descriptions of observable events, historians cannot succeed in telling us how non-natural events happened. This claim may be contradicted by what historians say, but it is confirmed by what they do in exercising their craft. About any non-natural event we may ask what happened and why it happened. In answering the first question historians typically offer an interpretation, in answering the second question they offer an explanation. When talking about history, philosophers have been concerned more with explanation than with interpretation. In exercising their craft, historians do not always distinguish between interpretations and explanations; some even claim that what-questions and why-questions cannot be answered independently of each other. My remarks in this paper shall be about interpretation in historiography
Archaeology · Art · Historiography · Literature · Narrative · History · Philosophy, History, and Historiography
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |