996018 The Rhetoric of Historiography. Law, Literature, and History in the European West (S) (WiSe 2017/2018)

This seminar considers the large-scale evolution of European historiographical rhetoric and methods from the late Middle Ages to the present, with special attention to the relationship among law, literature, and history and with particular emphasis on the early modern period (from which selected primary texts will be drawn). We will aim to be especially sensitive to the shifting aims and objectives of Western historiography – as, among other things, instrument of moral philosophy; foundational mythology; personal apologia; political propaganda; tribunal.

Bibliography

Theoretical Readings:

F.R. Ankersmit, Historical Representation (Stanford UP, 2002)

Michel De Certeau, The Writing of History (Columbia UP 1992); L’Ecriture de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard 2002 [1975]); Das Schreiben der Geschichte (incomplete translation; Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1991)

Natalie Z. Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Harvard UP, 1984); Die wahrhaftige Geschichte von der Wiederkehr des Martin Guerre. Tr. Ute und Wolf Heinrich Leube. Mit einem Nachwort von Carlo Ginzburg (Klaus Wagenbach, 2004)

Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance. Columbia UP, 1970

K. Korhonen, ed. Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the History/Literature Debate (Brill, 2006) Nicholas Paige, Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) Jeremy Popkin, From Herodotus to H-Net: The Story of Historiography (Oxford UP, 2015)

D.R. Woolf. Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge UP, 2000