Historical Representation

Historical Representation

Author: F. R. Ankersmit

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780804739801

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focusing on the notion of representation and on the necessity of distinguishing between representation and description, this book argues that the traditional semantic apparatus of meaning, truth, and reference that we use for description must be redefined if we are to understand properly the nature of historical writing.


Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation

Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation

Author: Frank R. Ankersmit

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0801464323

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, the noted intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit provides a systematic account of the problems of reference, truth, and meaning in historical writing. He works from the conviction that the historicist account of historical writing, associated primarily with Leopold von Ranke and Wilhelm von Humboldt, is essentially correct but that its original idealist and romanticist idiom needs to be translated into more modern terms. Rehabilitating historicism for the contemporary philosophy of history, he argues, "reveals the basic truths about the nature of the past itself, how we relate to it, and how we make sense of the past in historical writing." At the heart of Ankersmit's project is a sharp distinction between interpretation and representation. The historical text, he holds, is first and foremost a representation of some part of the past, not an interpretation. The book's central chapters address the concept of historical representation from the perspectives of reference, truth, and meaning. Ankersmit then goes on to discuss the possible role of experience in the history writing, which leads directly to a consideration of subjectivity and ethics in the historian's practice. Ankersmit concludes with a chapter on political history, which he maintains is the "basis and condition of all other variants of historical writing." Ankersmit’s rehabilitation of historicism is a powerfully original and provocative contribution to the debate about the nature of historical writing.


Meaning and Representation in History

Meaning and Representation in History

Author: Jörn Rüsen

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2006-08-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857455559

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

History has always been more than just the past. It involves a relationship between past and present, perceived, on the one hand, as a temporal chain of events and, on the other, symbolically as an interpretation that gives meaning to these events through varying cultural orientations, charging it with norms and values, hopes and fears. And it is memory that links the present to the past and therefore has to be seen as the most fundamental procedure of the human mind that constitutes history: memory and historical thinking are the door of the human mind to experience. At the same time, it transforms the past into a meaningful and sense bearing part of the present and beyond. It is these complex interrelationships that are the focus of the contributors to this volume, among them such distinguished scholars as Paul Ricoeur, Johan Galtung, Eberhard Lämmert, and James E. Young. Full of profound insights into human society pat and present it is a book that not only historians but also philosophers and social scientists should engage with.


Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality

Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality

Author: Timothy David Barnes

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780801435263

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the first book on Ammianus to place equal emphasis on the literary and historical aspects of his writing. Barnes assesses Ammianus' depiction of historical reality by simultaneously investigating both the historical accuracy and the literary qualities of the Res Gestae. He examines its structure and arrangement, emphasizes its Greek, pagan, and polemical features, and points out the extent to which Ammianus drew on his imagination in shaping the narrative.


Shocking Representation

Shocking Representation

Author: Adam Lowenstein

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005-12-22

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0231132468

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this imaginative new work, Adam Lowenstein explores the ways in which a group of groundbreaking horror films engaged the haunting social conflicts left in the wake of World War II, Hiroshima, and the Vietnam War. Lowenstein centers Shocking Representation around readings of films by Georges Franju, Michael Powell, Shindo Kaneto, Wes Craven, and David Cronenberg. He shows that through allegorical representations these directors' films confronted and challenged comforting historical narratives and notions of national identity intended to soothe public anxieties in the aftermath of national traumas. Borrowing elements from art cinema and the horror genre, these directors disrupted the boundaries between high and low cinema. Lowenstein contrasts their works, often dismissed by contemporary critics, with the films of acclaimed "New Wave" directors in France, England, Japan, and the United States. He argues that these "New Wave" films, which were embraced as both art and national cinema, often upheld conventional ideas of nation, history, gender, and class questioned by the horror films. By fusing film studies with the emerging field of trauma studies, and drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Adam Lowenstein offers a bold reassessment of the modern horror film and the idea of national cinema.


The Rhetoric of Historical Representation

The Rhetoric of Historical Representation

Author: Ann Rigney

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-02-13

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780521530682

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The role which narrative discourse plays in the writing of history is an area of increasing interest to historians and literary theorists, resulting in some of the most stimulating and controversial historiographical work in recent years. The rhetoric of historical representation represents one of the first attempts to carry out a sustained textual analysis of historiographical practice. Ann Rigney focusses on three celebrated nineteenth-century histories of the French Revolution, written by Alphonse de Lamartine, Jules Michelet and Louis Blanc. What distinguishes her account is the sensitivity and sophistication with which she handles the semiotic issues each text raises. She shows how a greater understanding of the specific features of historical narration can be achieved through a comparative analysis of the different representations of a common event. This fresh new perspective on a long-standing historiographical debate brings into relief the ways in which the narrative medium can be used to invest events with one significance rather than another.


Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England

Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England

Author: James A. Knapp

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1351928902

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Illustrating the Past is a study of the status of visual and verbal media in early modern English representations of the past. It focuses on general attitudes towards visual and verbal representations of history as well as specific illustrated books produced during the period. Through a close examination of the relationship of image to text in light of contemporary discussions of poetic and aesthetic practice, the book demonstrates that the struggle between the image and the word played a profoundly important role in England's emergent historical self-awareness. The opposition between history and story, fact and fiction, often tenuous, provided a sounding board for deeper conflicts over the form in which representations might best yield truth from history. The ensuing schism between poets and historians over the proper venue for the lessons of the past manifested itself on the pages of early modern printed books. The discussion focuses on the word and image relationships in several important illustrated books printed during the second half of the sixteenth century-including Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) and Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563, 1570)-in the context of contemporary works on history and poetics, such as Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and Thomas Blundeville's The true order and Method of wryting and reading Hystories. Illustrating the Past specifically answers two important questions concerning the resultant production of literary and historical texts in the period: Why did the use of images in printed histories suddenly become unpopular at the end of the sixteenth century? and What impact did this publishing trend have on writers of literary and historical texts?


Historical Representation and the Postcolonial Imaginary

Historical Representation and the Postcolonial Imaginary

Author: John Hartnett

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1443828084

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Historical Representation and the Postcolonial Imaginary: Constructing Travellers and Aborigines endeavours to provide an overview of the role which oral history plays in the documentation, representation and subsequent empowerment of neglected and long-marginalised social groups, in this case: the cultural minorities that are the Irish Travellers and the Australian Aborigines. Oral history has proved paramount in enabling such groups to document their pasts, pasts which until recently had been occluded and often-ignored. This work explores the genre that is oral history through the prism that is the construction of the ‘Other’ in society and with particular reference to two minorities whose histories share a range of similar characteristics. In examining this process, it is possible to trace the transformation of folklore and storytelling into documented historical narrative.


Introduction to Representation Theory

Introduction to Representation Theory

Author: Pavel I. Etingof

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0821853511

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Very roughly speaking, representation theory studies symmetry in linear spaces. It is a beautiful mathematical subject which has many applications, ranging from number theory and combinatorics to geometry, probability theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory. The goal of this book is to give a ``holistic'' introduction to representation theory, presenting it as a unified subject which studies representations of associative algebras and treating the representation theories of groups, Lie algebras, and quivers as special cases. Using this approach, the book covers a number of standard topics in the representation theories of these structures. Theoretical material in the book is supplemented by many problems and exercises which touch upon a lot of additional topics; the more difficult exercises are provided with hints. The book is designed as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. It should be accessible to students with a strong background in linear algebra and a basic knowledge of abstract algebra.