Against the Teleology of Technique

Abstract

From the mid-twentieth century, David Womersley observes, the effort to trace the historicalmindedness of our own culture to the sixteenth century has distorted our view of early modern history writing. By the 1960s, the dominant view was a narrative of progress based on supposed innovations in procedure that spurred an awareness of anachronism, a critical attitude toward sources, and an interest in causation. In the sixteenth century, however, religious and secular elements existed in close entanglement in the careers of figures such as Hayward and Savile; Foxe’s Actes and Monuments unified technical refinement and commitment to religious polemic. Separating ecclesiastical and secular history has impoverished and aestheticized the representation of Tudor historiography and has led to major misreadings and undervaluings of the chronicle tradition in particular. Bringing these strands together would reveal that the chronicles are far from the products of a pre61. Ibid., 6, 7, 10. 62. See the review by G. R. Elton in History and Theory 20 (1981), esp. 98–99. 63. Of course, one result of this vigilance might be to leave a word unchanged; but, once one has taken the measure of the changes that were made, it is difficult to ascribe textual stability to authorial passivity. The decision not to change was as deliberate and conscious as the decision to amend. 64. G. H. Nadel,“Philosophy of History before Historicism,”History and Theory 3 (1964): 291–92. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Wed, 29 Jun 2016 04:02:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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