Hayden White Criticism
Hayden White, an eminent American historian and critic, revolutionized the study of historiography by emphasizing the literary and narrative aspects of historical writing. His seminal work, Metahistory (1973), challenges traditional views by suggesting that historical narratives are shaped more by rhetorical and narrative devices than by objective facts, a perspective that has sparked significant debate among scholars. White's ideas have roots in the theories of Giambattista Vico and Kenneth Burke, particularly his concept of tropes, which argues that metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony form the foundational structures of historical narrative, as noted in reviews by Ermarth, Grosskurth, and Pierson.
White further elaborated his theories in Tropics of Discourse (1978) and The Content of the Form (1987), where he explored the interplay between ideology and narrative form, a topic that has been reviewed positively by critics like LaCapra and Champagne. In Figural Realism (1999), White applied trope theory to figures like Proust and Freud, addressing ethical challenges in representing historical events such as the Holocaust.
While White's work has been praised for its intellectual breadth, it has also faced criticism, particularly from historians who argue that his conflation of history and fiction leads to moral and epistemological relativism, as examined by Mandelbaum. Literary theorists, however, have welcomed White's focus on the figurative aspects of historiography, though some critique his rigid categorization of rhetorical forms, as discussed by Tambling and Carroll. Despite these debates, White's work remains influential for its provocative questioning of historical interpretation, contributing to the evolution of historical theory and practice.
Contents
- Principal Works
-
Essays
-
Metahistory
(summary)
In the following review, Grosskurth offers a positive assessment of Metahistory, which she hails as a “deliberately provocative book.”
-
Metahistory
(summary)
In the following review, Ermarth offers a positive assessment of Metahistory. Metahistory is a daring, ingenious, and sometimes bewildering tour de force. White has produced a profoundly original “critique of historical reason,” based not upon the usual fare of idealist metaphysics or the logic of predictive science but upon linguistics—a discipline that may become the novum organon of the twentieth century. The author presents a unified field theory of history, which takes its departure from the linguistic structures and figurative language implicit in the historical writing of the great practitioners—Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt—and theorists—Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Croce—of the classical age of history.
-
Metahistory
(summary)
In the following review, Pierson praises Metahistory as “a bold and imaginative book” and outlines the book’s key points of contention that will likely be debated by scholars.
-
Tropics of Discourse
(summary)
In the following positive review of Tropics of Discourse, LaCapra provides a close analysis of White's theoretical assertions and directs constructive criticism toward problematic aspects of White's philosophical assumptions.
-
Tropics of Discourse
(summary)
In the following review of Tropics of Discourse, Champagne commends White's insights into history's roots in storytelling. Addressed to the problem of whether historical writing can remain concerned with the past and with an objective view of facts, this collection of essays presents history as a narrated story, a literary document with its origins in the human imagination. The title is based upon the etymology of “tropics” and “discourse” and is intent upon suggesting the “ways or manner” of “moving to and fro.” The methodology beyond the title assumes a prelogical area of experience, forgotten by the present-day scientific posture of history and revived in order to establish the tropological basis of history. A basic thesis is the acceptance of Kenneth Burke's proposition that there have been four “master tropes” governing civilized discourse since the Renaissance: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. This fourfold pattern is then discussed in various transformations from Piaget's child studies, through Freud's revelations about dreams, into E. P. Thompson's insights into the working-class consciousness.
-
The Problem of Reading
(summary)
In the following excerpt, King offers a positive evaluation of Tropics of Discourse.
-
The Presuppositions of Metahistory
(summary)
In the following essay, Mandelbaum examines the thesis of Metahistory and finds flaws in White's failure to differentiate between the work of historians and philosophers of history, as well as his misconception of historical data, reductive application of linguistic tropes, and acceptance of relativism.
-
Hayden White and History
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Bann discusses the lasting significance of Metahistory and offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form.
-
Recent Books on Narrative Theory: An Essay-Review
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Raval offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form. Contemporary narrative theory is concerned with the analysis of narrative discourse and narrativity in order to explain the many forms and structures of storytelling in world literature and their implications. It also focuses on possible relations existing among mythic, historical, and fictional narratives, and it reflects on the possibility and implications of reconceptualizing these relations for literary, cultural, and historiographic theory.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review of The Content of the Form, Flores provides an overview of White's conceptual assertions, which he then applies to examples of White's own stylistic phrases in the book.
-
The Kingdoms of Theory and the New Historicism in America
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Gunn discusses trends in contemporary historical theory and issues raised by White in The Content of the Form.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review, Tambling finds shortcomings in The Content of the Form, a compilation of essays from 1979 onward by Hayden White that engages four recurrent themes: the relationship between history and narrative, the relationship between historical and fictional narrative, the place that interpretation has within the writing of history, and the Nietzschean theme of the uses and disadvantages of history for life.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review of The Content of the Form, Gross commends White's insightful ideas, but suggests that his “dense” and “formidable” prose may limit his audience.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review of The Content of the Form, Dray commends White's book, but objects to his view of history as political propaganda.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review, LaCapra offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form, which might be considered the third part of a trilogy whose two earlier installments were Metahistory (1973) and Tropics of Discourse (1978). Metahistory took the form of a systematic treatise that laid down the principles for Hayden White's poetics of historiography. Tropics of Discourse was a collection of essays that played significant variations on those thematic principles. The Content of the Form is another collection of essays in which still further and at times more significant variations are in evidence.
-
Narrative Questions
(summary)
In the following review of The Content of the Form, Thomas finds shortcomings in White's rhetorical style and habit of positing significant questions that he has not fully resolved and cannot adequately answer.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following review, King offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form.
-
Narrative and History
(summary)
In the following review, McCallum offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form, highlighting Hayden White's contribution to the reconceptualization of history and discussing his previous works, Metahistory and Tropics of Discourse.
-
The Content of the Form
(summary)
In the following positive review, Engebretsen summarizes White's theoretical analysis and assertions in The Content of the Form. The eight essays in this book will be familiar to White's readers, since all have appeared previously. Together, however, they provide more than a convenient collection of White's recent writing; they continue the argument developed in Tropics of Discourse and applied so successfully in Metahistory that history (and the human sciences generally) is thoroughly rhetorical. Rather than stylistic embellishment, the rhetorical code we employ is indistinguishable from our interpretation of events. But these essays focus the issues more particularly. The typologies of trope, emplotment, argument, and ideology from the earlier works here give way to the argument that narrative, far from being merely a form of discourse that can be filled with different contents … already possesses a content prior to any given actualization of it in speech or writing. That prior content turns out to be ideological. White quotes Hegel approvingly on the connections between politics and nineteenth-century narrative history: “It is the state that first presents a subject matter that not only is adapted to the prose of history but involves the production of such history in the very progress of its own being.” These essays illustrate the connection between narrative history and ideology—particularly nineteenth-century bourgeois ideology—and also examine the role of narrative and ideology in the work of three major contemporary theorists.
-
Narrativity and Historical Representation
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Rigney examines questions of narrativity in The Content of the Form and concludes that White's historiographic interpretation does not sustain a persuasive argument.
-
Fiction and History: A Common Core?
(summary)
In the following essay, Cebik examines the philosophical basis for conflating historical writing and literary fiction, as suggested by White's theoretical model of historical discourse and typological schema.
-
Hayden White's Critique of the Writing of History
(summary)
In the following essay, Kansteiner examines the development of White's theoretical perspective, methodology, and postulations in Metahistory, Tropics of Discourse, and The Content of the Form, while discussing the critical reception of White's work among historians and literary theorists.
-
Searching for an Audience: The Historical Profession in the Media Age—A Comment on Arthur Marwick and Hayden White
(summary)
In the following essay, Kansteiner discusses the different historiographic perspectives of Marwick and White, and suggests that a new historiographic approach is needed to deal with questions raised by popular visual media, notably films and documentaries.
-
Narrative History as a Way of Life
(summary)
In the following essay, Roberts examines the opposing theoretical positions of White and Arthur Marwick and defends Marwick's perspective of narrative history.
-
Hayden White (And the Content and the Form and Everyone Else) at the AHA
(summary)
In the following essay, Partner relates her observations and experiences during a January 1997 meeting of the American Historical Association devoted to the subject of Hayden White.
-
The Reception of Hayden White
(summary)
In the following essay, Vann provides a quantitative analysis of White's critical reception among professional historians and discusses aspects of White's work that have drawn criticism, notably his terminology and alleged relativism.
-
Figural Realism
(summary)
In the following review, Carrard provides an overview of the topics addressed by White in Figural Realism. Carrard expresses disapproval over White's decision to forego a unifying prefatory essay in the volume.
-
Figural Realism
(summary)
In the following review of Figural Realism, Megill finds flaws in White's rhetorical approach and the interpretative “multiplicity” of his historical perspective.
-
Tropology and Narration
(summary)
In the following review of Figural Realism, Carroll explores the shortcomings in White's application of tropes to narrative history and objects to the suggestion that historical writing is essentially indistinguishable from literary fiction.
-
Figural Realism
(summary)
In the following review, Folks regards Figural Realism as “an eloquent effort” in defense of poststructuralism.
-
Metahistory
(summary)
- Further Reading