Imperfect histories
Subtitle: the elusive past and the legacy of romantic historicism
By: Ann Rigney.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
Subjects: Scott, Walter, Sir, 1771-1832.; Historical fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Literature and history -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Literature and history -- France -- History -- 19th century.; Historiography -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Historical fiction, Scottish -- History and criticism.; Historiography -- France -- History -- 19th century.; Historical fiction, French -- History and criticism.; Historicism -- History -- 19th century.; Romanticism -- Great Britain.; Romanticism -- France.
Description: "Imperfect Histories puts "imperfection" at the heart of a theory of historical representation. Ann Rigney shows how historical writing involves dealing with intractable subjects that resist our efforts to know and to shape them. Those who write history, she says, engage in an ongoing struggle to match up what they find relevant in the past with the information and interpretive models at their disposal. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of historical practice.

This dissatisfaction is especially evident in the various attempts made over the last two centuries to write an "alternative" history of everyday experience.".

"Focusing on historical writing in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, Rigney analyzes a wide range of works by Walter Scott, Jules Michelet, Augustin Thierry, and Thomas Carlyle. She shows how the attempt to write an alternative history brought historical writing into a close yet fraught relationship with literature.

The result is a new account of that relationship as it took shape in the romantic period and as it continues to influence contemporary practices."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-203) and index.