The Revival of Narrative, Some Comments - Eric Hobsbawm
The Revival of Narrative, Some Comments - Eric Hobsbawm
The Revival of Narrative, Some Comments - Eric Hobsbawm
SOME COMMENTS
LAWRENCE STONE BELIEVES THAT THERE IS A REVIVAL OF "NARRATIVE
history" because there has been a decline in the history devoted to
asking "the big why questions", the generalizing "scientific history".
This in turn he thinks is due to disillusionment with the essentially
economic determinist models of historical explanation, Marxist or
otherwise, which have tended to dominate in the post-war years; to the
mentalite, that vague catch-all term which Stone, perhaps wisely, does
not try to clarify, do not exclusively or predominantly avoid the broad
view. This at least is a lesson they have learned from the anthro-
pologists.
Do these observations account for Stone's "broad cluster of changes
in the nature of historical discourse"?18 Perhaps not. However, they
demonstrate that it is possible to explain much of what he surveys as-
the continuation of past historical enterprises by other means, instead
of as proofs of their bankruptcy. One would not wish to deny that some
historians regard them as bankrupt or undesirable and wish to change
their discourse in consequence, for various reasons, some of them