The Revival of Narrative: Thoughts on a Current Historiographical Debate

MARK PHILLIPS The Revival of Narrative: Thoughts on a Current Historiographical Debate That history is both art and science is a commonly accepted dictum. Unfortunately it does not follow that historians have given equal critical attention to both sides of their discipline. As J.H. Hexter has written, 'the casualness with which historians have investigated the structure of historiography compared with the care and exacting scrutiny to which they subject the nature of data, evidence, and inference in works of history indicates that in their role as critics they regard the latter as the historian's legitimate central preoccupation and the former as a secondary and indepedent matter ... without effect on the validity of the finished work.'1 Despite Hexter's eminence among critics of historical writing, his witty and stimulating essay on 'The Rhetoric of History' seems almost as isolated today as when it was first published a dozen years ago. Certainly his call for systematic investigation of 'the structure of historiography' has met little response among the mass of historians. Only the work of Hayden White - to be discussed briefly later - stands out as a major exception, and it appears all the more exceptional for being rooted in literary theory rather than the more traditional areas of philosophy of history and 'historiology:* As for the analytic philosophers of history, whom Hexter was also addressing, they have indeed given a good deal of attention recently to problems ofnarrative. Their focus, however, remains on the meaningfulness of narrative as a special type of explanation, rather than on the particular characteristics, resources, conventions, or structures of historiographical narration.2 In these circumstances, the recent flare-up of controversy over 'the revival of narrative' in the pages of a prestigiOUS historicaljournal seemed a very promising sign, all the more so since the discussion came from men not primarily identified with historiology as a field of study and was directed at the broad audience of a general publication.>In the course of the debate a number of important arguments have been made about the current direction of historical interests and the relationship between .. I use this neolOgism, rather than the traditional tenn 'historiography.' to avoid confusion . As Hexter and many others have pointed out, 'historiography' ought properly to refer to the writing of history, which leaves us in need of a way of referring to studies in the writing of history, which for want of anything better I will call 'historiology.' UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 53. NUMBER 2, WINTER 198Y4 150 MARK PHILLIPS history and the social sciences - questions that will not be our concern here. However, from the point of view of an interest in historiographical narrative as such, the results were very disappointing. The willingness of thIee distinguished historians to discuss narrative in terms of a definition that is Simplistic and old-fashioned gives the clearest evidence that Hexter's challenge needs to be renewed. As much as ever the paradox that Hexter pointed to remains true: in their own work many historians take great pains over their writing, while the profession tacitly agrees that the rhetoric of history is 'at best a peripheral concern." Lawrence Stone's essay on the 'Revival of Narrative' is a valuable attempt to discern new directions in historiography. His argument, to put it as simply as possible, is that historians have recently lost faith in the absolute pretensions of 'scientific history' and that this has led to a renewed interest in narrative - a traditional form of historical writing which it has been fashionable to deride. The 'new history: however, uses narrative in a way that is different in several respects from the old-fashioned narrative of traditional historians. This thesis involves many judgments about current historical thinking which need not concern us here. My interest, rather, is simply in the sense of 'narrative' as Stone employs the term - a sense that is not significantly questioned by either of the two historians who replied. Recognizing the importance of 'narrative' to his argument, Stone begins his essay with a definition of the term: Narrative is taken to mean the organization of material in a chronologically sequential order and the focusing of the content into a single...