Major Works for Extension History

[sudodds]

Hello!
If anyone could help me this would be great!

For my project I'm basing it on the historiography of Richard III... while I've done all my research (context, sources and all) I'm finding it difficult to come up with a sophisticated question I can use.

Any ideas???

Thank you! 

Heya! Sure thing In my opinion, it is always best to use the more "history" element - i.e. a focus event or personality, so in your case Richard the Third - as a case study to demonstrate a wider historiographical concept, rather than the focus of the question! This will prevent any narrative/history writing, and will instead force you to write historiography!! With that in mind, I therefore suggest that you pick a historiographical concept or issue that you feel in pertinent to the historiography of Richard the Third. I don't know that much about him as a figure, but from what little I do know, perhaps these could work?;
- Impact of fiction and narrative to interpretations of historical figures (looking at Shakespeare's play as an example of historical writing!)
- Mythologising or Glamourising of history (don't know if this 100% works, just basing this off of the weird way in which Richard the Third was discovered)
- The concept and impact of National history on a nations sense of identity (So looking at British national identity here - If you chose this I highly recommend reading 'Nations and Nationalism Since 1780' by Hobsbawm. Originally I was going to look at Scottish national history through the 'highland myth' and this was very useful/interesting!)

SO! With those ideas in mind, your question may look like this, (again these are only suggestions - you don't have to do this if you don't want to!): To what extent can narrative storytelling provide an accurate depiction of the past?

Notice how I didn't mention Richard the Third? You still discuss him, but now rather than basing your whole essay around him which = history essay (something you don't want to write), you are instead forced to assert his significance as a historical figure in demonstrating the impact of narrative storytelling upon interpretations of his personality to prove your wider judgement upon the historiographical issue which is sooooo much more sophisticated! Think about it this way - Discovery is the concept in your Paper 1 essay question, but you case study is your prescribed text. The same works in this instance - plus you can bring in related texts also (ie. other case studies that demonstrate similar issues) to broaden the scope of your response! So each of you paragraphs would feature one concern, detriment or impact of narrative storytelling on history - maybe to make history more palatable thus sell more copies, to create a national identity (myth), how it reduces an event to its storytelling components, etc, etc. (If you do this - highly suggest having a look at Hayden White and his concept of 'Tropes'!). Then you'd relate back each idea to how this is shown through the historiography of Richard the Third.

Hope this helps!! If you are confused about anything please let me know

Susie

[sudodds]

Hi Susie,

Thank you so much for getting back to me!
I really like the idea you gave about National history/Identity and also the essay question you gave!

So I found this website, and I just wanted to ask firstly, if this was the sort of thing you were talking about (in regards to Hayden White's tropes); and secondly, also if you could clear up the 'Argument' section of this website please!!
http://www.lehigh.edu/~ineng/syll/syll-metahistory.html

But if I were to structure my essay according to the three ideas, how would I do so, so I can reach the 2500 word count?

Thank you so much for all of this... its greatly appreciated! 

No worries! So glad it helped

Yes that is pretty much what I mean - it'd be beneficial to read up on what he actually wrote (i.e. pick up and have a flick through one of his books), but as a starting point this is great! Now I am no expert on White, and this is tricky stuff, so bear with me here, but from my understanding, the 'argument' section means what they believe the driving force of history is, and how it should be constructed. So, if they were, for example Mechanistic, then they believe that there are patterns and laws in history that can and must be identified - they'd adhere to (I believe) a teleological view of history - so Marxist historians are most likely Mechanistic! They see history as not only a progressive system through the various socio-economic structures towards Communism, but also as class struggle (re. "the history of all hitherto societies is the history of the class struggle"). Again, I am no expert - this is at best a watered down interpretation, and at worst completely wrong  so take this with a grain of salt, but that is what I understand his argument to be!

So are you saying you're interested in looking at the three things mentioned on the website - Emplotment, argument and ideological implication? I actually think that could be a cool structure So your question could be "critically analyse the effectiveness and accuracy of Hayden White's concept of 'metahistory'" through an analysis of the interpretations of Richard the Third Or did you mean the three ideas that I mentioned (which I also think could work really well!)? If so then what you would want to do is write a paragraph on each, you want to break down the concept or idea in regards to its broader historiographical impact, while also integrating its significance in regards to your case study! Here is an excerpt from my major work to demonstrate what I mean. This was part of my paragraph on postmodernism and the linguistic turn, and how it contributes to the expansion of historiographical thought and critique, while simultaneously disrupting the structure of History, and perverted the central aims and methodologies that governed its construction, contributing to its inevitable transition into its “opposite” (I actually mention Hayden White and tropes here!) Bill O'Reilly was my case study, but as you'll notice, he's not necessarily the driving focus of the extract, more so he is used to demonstrate the validity of my argument.

Question:
"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."

~ Mao Tse-Tung (On Contradiction, 1937)

To what extent is the discipline of History experiencing this dialectical dilemma?

Building upon the works of relativist historians – many of whom subscribe to a “bottom-up” approach – the linguistic turn aimed to disrupt “traditional” history, as evident through Hayden White’s assertion that “Postmodernists maintain that all knowledge is not only ‘knowledge about’ particular things but also ‘knowledge for’ particular social groups and cultural projects.” History, according to White, “is in essence nothing more than a literary text,” given that historians present their entirely subjective perspectives through a narrative structure, utilising what White describes as “tropes.” It has been stated many times (including by O’Reilly himself) that as a consequence O’Reilly’s books tend to read more as thrillers than academic texts, which may account for his popularity, as stated himself, “if you can write exciting books you would sell a lot of copies and have movies made of them.”
Therefore, it is evident, according to postmodernists such as White and Keith Jenkins, that subjectivity is an all pervasive force within history, as neither the historian nor his sources can present a neutral perspective. An objective “historical truth” is therefore unattainable. “Interpretation,” as stated by Carr, “is the lifeblood of history,” however this realisation presents a significant problem to the discipline, as it totally negates its supposed principal aim – the search for truth – which in turn completely shatters any shared understanding of what “History” actually is. Along with this, if an objective, undeniable “historical truth” is unattainable, and all historical texts are nothing more than imaginative, literary perspectives upon a historical issue, then all texts must be treated as valid, even though many, such as the works of Bill O’Reilly, are conducted with much less care and integrity.

Hope this helps!

Susie
 

[sudodds]

Hi Susie,

I'm sort of understanding this, but I'm now just a bit confused (I think I'm worrying about structure and what ideas to talk about...)

I think my problem in understanding Hayden White's metahistory is that I don't know how to incorporate Richard III into it, and how I could write the essay and make it total the word count requirement.

About 10 minutes ago I just had a revelation about another potential question, but if I were to do this, I'm not sure how I could change it to make it address the 'concept' thing we had going on in the other essay ideas and how to reword it so it doesn't mention Richard III... it was something along the lines of, 'to what extent can Tudor propaganda/myth be creditable as an accurate depiction of Richard III?'

Ahhh for sure it is definitely a hard thing to get around. I think the way you link it to Richard the Third is you look at the various interpretations of him, and you suggest what tropes are being utilised by various historians, and why those historians would utilise them. However if you're not keen then that's a-okay! Your project after all, and if you're not feeling it or you're not passionate about something then steer clear! It's really obvious when a student doesn't have an interest in their subject.

Your question is better, however it is still focusing too much on history rather than historiography. As I said earlier, I think it is better to not have Richard the Third included in the actual question. Bill O'Reilly wasn't included in mine, just within my synopsis I suggested that he would be my principle case study which I would integrate throughout my response. If you want to look at propaganda/myth though then I think that is fine Make your question conceptually specific, but historiographically broad if that makes sense. Thinking about propaganda in particular, are you suggesting propaganda that was written at the time? Then maybe your question could be: 'To what extent can a period write their own history?'. Could that work? Then you can look at the way in which Richard the Third portrayed himself at the time through propaganda and whether that is accurate, while dealing with a more sophisticated overhead concept!

Hope this helps!

Susie

[sudodds]

Hello!

I finally understand everything!!!

So I've come up with a question which is something along the lines of 'a study of the postmodern historiographical thought on the evaluation of historical fiction being equally creditable as historical fact.'

I'm hoping this is what you meant by the question being 'concept' based; and from this I'm hoping to discuss different aspects of the postmodernist dogma, and use Richard III as the case study  to show how fiction and factual histories are to a degree similar.

Hopefully this all work out! 

Thank you so much Susie for everything you've helped me with and clearing everything up!!

Daniella 

Sounds awesome Daniella!! Great work - that is definitely a much more historiographically and conceptually rich thesis Well done, if you need any more help please let me know!

Susie