Is History Fiction?
Author(s): John Docker
Is History Fiction? explores in fresh and innovative ways the perennial question, What is History, and how can we in the present know the past? In a wonderful journey that starts with the classical Greeks and travels through the centuries to more recent forms of history that are framed by Marxism, postmodernism and feminism, John Docker and Ann Curthoys find that history has a double character. It is both a rigorous scrutiny of sources, and, because it presents the results of its enquiries as narrative, it is part of a literary world too. Such doubleness is the secret of history's fascination as an always changing, inventive endeavor. Yet it also explains why history has been a source of sometimes bitter disputes. Many recent examples of the 'history wars', including Keith Windschuttle in Australia, are discussed.
Product Information
Ann Curthoys is a well-known historian and public intellectual. She has published many books, her most recent being Freedom Ride: A Freedomrider Remembers (2002). John docker is a well-known literary and cultural critic. His numerous books include Posmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History and 1492: The Poetics of Diaspora.
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1 Heroductus and World History; 2 Thucydides; 3 Leopold von Banke and Sir Walter Scott; 4 History, Science and Art; 5 Has History any Meaning?; 6 History in the Light of Catastrophe; 7 The Linguistic Turn; 8 The Feminist Challenge; 9 Postmodernism; 10 Anti-Postmodernism and the Holocaust; 11 History Wars.
General Fields
- :
- : University of New South Wales Press (UNSW Press)
- : University of New South Wales Press (UNSW Press)
- : 0.4
- : 01 October 2005
- : 234mm X 153mm
- : Australia
- : books
Special Fields
- : John Docker
- : Paperback
- : 901
- : 304