Above, about and beyond the writing of history: a retrospective view of Hayden White'sMetahistoryon the 40th anniversary of its publication

Abstract

Since its publication 40 years ago, Hayden White's Metahistory has been recognized as a foundational work for the literary analysis of historical writing. Long thought to be primarily concerned with questions of narrative, new interpretations have recently revised our understanding of White's principal aims as a theorist and philosopher of history. What has emerged from these works is a novel view of the status and meaning of tropes in Metahistory, the underlying existentialist engagements that guided White's thinking about them, and the ways in which both served his encompassing goal not only to critique the reigning Rankean paradigm of ‘history’ but to free contemporary historians and historiography altogether from the ‘burden of history’ for the sake of a morally responsible future. The article analyses the ways in which these new interpretations of White alter our understanding of the corpus of his work, from his early article on the ‘burden of history’ to his most recent writings on ‘the practical past’, with a principal focus on the re-readings of Metahistory itself.

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