Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

This volume provides an overview of the many forms of historical thought which have flourished in Europe and North America from biblical times and classical antiquity down to the contemporary era of the Internet, television, and the global film industry. In essays that cover more than two thousand years of Western cultural history, the twenty-four contributors to this book examine the evolving theories, methods, and conceptual categories that men and women have used to explain and write about the past. Over the long development of Western historical writing, historians have come from an extraordinary range of social and cultural positions – monks, courtiers and royal scribes, army generals and wealthy aristocrats, prosperous merchants and poor workers, political leaders and statesmen, philosophers, poets, teachers, university professors, artists, and filmmakers. Thinking and writing about history, as the authors of the following essays show, has always been shaped by a host of different and often conflicting ideals, aspirations, and practical objectives, including religious beliefs, political ideologies, propaganda for ruling elites (or for their opponents), literary expression, popular entertainment, academic careerism, and the search for personal or collective identities. The chapters in this book refer in various ways to all of these historical practices, and they describe specific ... log in or subscribe to read full text