History, Historians, and Autobiography

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University of Chicago Press, 2005 M05 9 - 339 páginas
Though history and autobiography both claim to tell true stories about the past, historians have traditionally rejected first-person accounts as subjective and therefore unreliable. What then, asks Jeremy D. Popkin in History, Historians, and Autobiography, are we to make of the ever-increasing number of professional historians who are publishing stories of their own lives? And how is this recent development changing the nature of history-writing, the historical profession, and the genre of autobiography?

Drawing on the theoretical work of contemporary critics of autobiography and the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Popkin reads the autobiographical classics of Edward Gibbon and Henry Adams and the memoirs of contemporary historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Peter Gay, Jill Ker Conway, and many others, he reveals the contributions historians' life stories make to our understanding of the human experience. Historians' autobiographies, he shows, reveal how scholars arrive at their vocations, the difficulties of writing about modern professional life, and the ways in which personal stories can add to our understanding of historical events such as war, political movements, and the traumas of the Holocaust.

An engrossing overview of the way historians view themselves and their profession, this work will be of interest to readers concerned with the ways in which we understand the past, as well as anyone interested in the art of life-writing.

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Contenido

INTRODUCTION
1
1 History and Autobiography
11
2 Narrative Theory History and Autobiography
33
3 Historians as Autobiographers
57
Edward Gibbon and Henry Adams
92
The Issue of Vocation in Historians Autobiographies
120
Historians on Their Professional Lives
151
7 Historians Autobiographies and Historical Experience
184
8 Holocaust Memories Historians Memoirs
221
9 Historians and the Reshaping of Personal Narrative
246
CONCLUSION
277
NOTES
287
BIBLIOGRAPHY
307
INDEX
331
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Jeremy D. Popkin is the T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of several books, including Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-1799 and History, Historians, and Autobiography.

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