Narrative – Pea

Narrative history is a form of history that has been around for many millennia, and does not seem to be leaving any time soon. Before it was even labeled as a form of history,  it was being used. Every civilization has its myths and legends that were told to their children for centuries, and sometimes still are. These are narratives, and many could be classified as historical narratives because they involve ancient people, events, and places. The narrative form of history is a natural form that many are not even conscious that they are using. As stated in The Houses of History, telling stories is a fundamental part of human nature, possibly even a ‘deep structure’ hardwired into our minds.^[1] These narratives are essential to the understanding of history and to the discipline itself.

While the narrative form of history has been around for almost as long as human existence, there is some criticism for this style of presenting information. The first critique is that narratives focus upon human action and conduct, and, as a consequence, may overplay human agency.^[2] This directly relates to the central focus on man, and not circumstances, that historical narratives take(1).

The next criticism some have on the historical narrative is that cause and effect is not always guaranteed, and the sequence of events does not always imply this. Some believe that reality is not as coherent as the narratives make it out to be, and it is actually very discontinuous. This point attacks the main focus on structural framing that narratives are written with in order for the reader to understand it easily (2).

The final critique to highlight is that the argument in historical narratives is not explicitly stated, rather, it is made implicit throughout the story and readers are left to deduce what it is by themselves. This points to the fact that historical narratives are meant to be descriptive instead of argumentative (3).

(1) While we often think of narratives and stories as based in fiction, that is not the case with historical narratives. Historical narratives are written about,during, or in relation to a real-life event. They may require some logical assumptions to complete the story and connect the dots, but overall, much of their structure is based in facts. For people who were not there to experience it first hand, those writers of historical narratives use first person accounts of the events and primary source documents to reconstruct it in ways that are coherent and easy for the readers to understand. It is imperative that historians use as much solid evidence and facts to construct their narratives, as it could alter the flow and clarity of the story they are trying to tell.

(2) The narrative form of history is the main format that is used by historians who wish to achieve empirical ‘coherence’ or logical consistency.^[3]When writing in the narrative format, historians organize material in chronological order in an effort to keep everything coherent for their readers. They want to make sure the information fits into a singular story that will span across the length of the text. Narrative history is the central format used to explain change over time, and is inherently descriptive.

(3) Narrative history is not the same as structural history, and there are two main ways that it differs. The first is that narrative history is formatted to be descriptive rather than being analytical. The other main difference is that the central focus of narrative history is not on objective facts, but on the lived experiences of humanity itself. It deals with the particular and specific rather than the collective and statistical.^[4] In other words, narrative focuses on the details of events and people instead of only analyzing the facts of events and people. Narrative history does not go in depth with statistics and avoids major analysis in favor of making the story more clear for the readers to understand. It gives the details that are often overlooked when others are searching for their causes and effects, while still working towards a specified end.

One important thing to recognize is that to ensure each historical narrative maintains coherence, they must be separated into different categories. The first of these categories is micro-narrative. A micro-narrative is written about a particular event.^[5] Micro-narratives could also be short recounts about a person or location.

Master narratives are pieces that are written to explain a broader portion of history than micro-narratives. These narratives are also typically written by the ‘victors’ and do not often elicit consensus.^[6] The stories of those who were lesser or lost the battles did not get their stories told. The colonized are essentially erased by the colonizers.

The grand narrative is a historical account that claims to offer the authoritative account of history generally.^[7] This is a much larger account of history that spans across a significant amount of time. It could highlight specific periods or a specific location or ‘state’.

Historical metanarratives are narratives that use a particular cosmology or metaphysical foundation as the basis of the narrative.^[8] An example of this would be the Abrahamic foundations of Judeo, Islamic, and Christian texts and teachings. Their truth relies on not entirely solid facts, but also systems of beliefs and traditions.

Hayden White is a very important author of historical narratives and works hard to combat the typical view that narratives do not belong in the study of history. In his book Metahistory, White argued against the view that history operates in a manifestly different mode from literature.^[9]

White’s main point in his book The Burden of History was that what shapes the writing of history is the protocols of language and linguistics. He argued that they do this in two ways: the choice of the theoretical concepts and narrative structures employed by historians to analyze and explain historical events, as well as through the linguistic paradigm ‘by which historians prefigure their field of study’.^[10]

White also suggested that four different tropes work to shape the structural forms of historical imagination, which include metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. The theory of these tropes goes as follows: Metaphor – one thing is described as being another thing, thus ‘carrying over’ all its associations. Metonymy – the substitution of the name of a thing by the name of an attribute of it, or something closely associated to it. Synecdoche – a part of something that is used to describe the whole, or vice versa. Irony – saying one thing while you mean another.^[11]

White believed that once a historian begins their research, they should select specific theoretical concepts and narrative structures to make sense of the information they collect. He suggested three strategies in which to do this, which also contain their own four alternative modes of articulation: Mode of emplotment – romantic, tragic, comic, satirical. Mode of argument – formist, mechanistic, organicist, contextualist. Mode of ideological implication – anarchist, radical, conservative, liberal.^[12]