Hayden White and a Literarily Informed Philosophy of History

Abstract

The year 2008 is the 25th of the publication of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, a milestone for the philosophy of history, since it comprehends its linguistic turn. 2008 is also the 80th birthday of Hayden White, an occasion for philosophers of history and historians from several areas to revisit his work and reconsider the challenges that it has delegated to us. A fundamental challenge is the necessity of going back, again and again, to literary theory to elucidate the nature of historical discourse. This article makes a critical evaluation on the consequences that literary information has for the cognitive status of historical representation.

Keywords

• discourse
• tropes
• figural realism
• literary theory.