Metahistory

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Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe is a historiography book by Hayden White first published in 1974.

In Metahistory, White rejects the notion that historians or journalists are able to write about the past or present as it actually happens. Instead he defines archetypes of historians with specific characteristics who approach history with different types of narratives. The medium (the type of narrative) is the integral message of the history. White provides a system intended to de-mystify histories, historians, news reports, and journalists who claim to present things objectively. He also proposes some methods for determining in what ways a given account lacks complete objectivity and how it can be seen as ultimately ideological.

References

• Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1974 ISBN 0-8018-1761-7

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