The Ethics of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1998–2007

Description

Hayden White is widely considered to be the most influential historical theorist of the twentieth century. The Ethics of Narrative brings together nearly all of White's uncollected essays from the last two decades of his life, revealing a lesser-known side of White: that of the public intellectual. From modern patriotism and European identity to Hannah Arendt's writings on totalitarianism, from the idea of the historical museum and the theme of melancholy in art history to trenchant readings of Leo Tolstoy and Primo Levi, the first volume of The Ethics of Narrative shows White at his most engaging, topical, and capacious. Expertly introduced by editor Robert Doran, who lucidly explains the major themes, sources, and frames of reference of White's thought, this volume features five previously unpublished lectures, as well as more complete versions of several published essays, thereby giving the reader unique access to White's late thought. In addition to historical theorists and intellectual historians, The Ethics of Narrative will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities in such fields as literary and cultural studies, art history and visual studies, and media studies. Foreword Editor’s Note Acknowledgments Editor’s Introduction 1. The Problem with Modern Patriotism 2. Symbols and Allegories of Temporality 3. The Discourse of Europe and the Search for a European Identity 4. Catastrophe, Communal Memory, and Mythic Discourse: The Uses of Myth in the Reconstruction of Society 5. Figura and Historical Subalternation 6. The Westernization of World History 7. On Transcommunality and Models of Community 8. Anomalies of the Historical Museum, or, History as Utopian Space 9. Figural Realism in Witness Literature: On Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo 10. The Elements of Totalitarianism: On Hannah Arendt 11. The Metaphysics of Western Historiography: Cosmos, Chaos, and Sequence in Historiological Representation 12. Historicality as a Trope of Political Discourse: Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics 13. Exile and Abjection 14. The Dark Side of Art History: On Melancholy 15. Against Historical Realism: A Reading of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace Index