Boundless dreams of the Levant”
Paul Wittek, the Geokge- Kreis , and the writing of Ottoman history
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9278570 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Heywood (0000-0001-8030-0879, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 32-50 |
| Publication date | 1989-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0035-869X • E-ISSN: 2051-2066 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0035869x00167851 |
| OpenAlex | W2330447610 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
That history may be read as literature is an aesthetic judgment, which does not deflect from the essential difference between the two modes. To paraphrase Gibbon, who above all in this context knew what he was talking about, “the end of history is truth ... the end of poetry is pleasure”. History, by definition, must fail to attain its ultimate goal of recreating the past “exactly as it happened”: that such is the case, whether because of the fallibility of the human intellect, or the difficulty (but not impossibility) of constructing history in a non-linear mode, or even – that stock excuse of historians – the doubtful, maybe putatively “fictional” quality of “the sources” – does not mean, as is from time to time suggested, that the attempt should not be made, or that history and fiction are indistinguishable. Intent, in this context, is all, nor should one forget that earlier proponents of fictionalised history may on occasion prove to be somewhat uncomfortable intellectual bedfellows
Art · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Excuse · Impossibility · Intellect · Literature · Pleasure · Poetry · Classical Studies and Philology · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.06 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2008 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |