Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Rating:
Summary: Highly sophisticated
Review: Hayden White's METAHISTORY is a sophisticated analysis of historical methodology in the nineteenth century.

Without a doubt, the book is brilliant. White analyzes the poetic and linguistic structure behind the writings of historians and philosophers of history. He focuses on the works of Michelet, Ranke, Toqueville, Burckhardt, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce. The result is a compelling look at how the methodological structure of historical writing changed through the course of the nineteenth century.

However, there is a major drawback to the work. White frequently uses a number of poetic and linguistic terms that are not standard fare for the average reader. For example, unfamiliar terms such as Metonymy, Synecdoche, Metaphor, Organicist, and Contextualist are used to describe the methodology behind various historical works. I frequently found myself lost and flipping back pages to find the definition of a particular term. This was an un-needed difficulty; the terms only served to obscure White's otherwise clear and logical arguments.

In conclusion, this highly sophisticated work is a brilliant piece of historical analysis. However, it would have been much more readable without the difficult language.

Rating:
Summary: A must for any historian
Review: Hayden White's Metahistory takes the reader deeply into the winding roads of history writing. From Hegel to Croce, he reviews and analizes the many different ways history was written in the nineteenth century and it's impact and influence in today's historiography. A must for any historian, but a little too deep - and perhaps boring- for those not familiar with history's theory and philosophy.