Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-19T03:27:14.300Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Choice of Fictions: Historians, Memory, and Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

James Wilkinson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contemporary historians' definition of what constitutes historical evidence has expanded dramatically since the mid-1970s, but so have their doubts about the interpretation of evidence, especially for difficult and evanescent sources such as collective memory. As the ambitions of historical practice have challenged the limits of interpretation, the use of novel sources has necessitated recourse to “foundationalist” assumptions, without which errors in historical witnesses cannot be detected or evaluated.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 111 , Issue 1: Special Topic The Status of Evidence , January 1996 , pp. 80 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Appleby, Joyce, Hunt, Lynn, and Jacob, Margaret. Telling the Truth about History. New York: Norton, 1994.Google Scholar
Bloch, Marc. Apologie pour l'histoire ou métier d'historien. Paris: Colin, 1974.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand “La longue durée.” Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations 4 (1958): 725–72.Google Scholar
Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien: Ein Versuch. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1930.Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-revolutionary France. New York: Norton, 1995.Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic, 1984.Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Fink, Carole. Marc Bloch: A Life in History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Furet, François “Beyond the Annales.” Journal of Modern History 55 (1983): 389–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del '500. Turin: Einaudi, 1976.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del sabba. Turin: Einaudi, 1989.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Adam. The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. New York: Viking, 1994.Google Scholar
Huizinga, Johan. Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen. Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1963.Google Scholar
Hunt, Lynn, ed The New Cultural History. Berkeley: California UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Jünger, Ernst. In Stahlgewittern. Stuttgart: Klett, 1961.Google Scholar
Keegan, John. The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. New York: Penguin, 1978.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. History and Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Ladurie, Emmanuel LeRoy. Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Langlois, Charles-Victor, and Seignobos, Charles. Introduction aux études historiques. Paris: Kimé, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah. Paris: Fayard, 1985.Google Scholar
Le Goff, Jacques, and Nora, Pierre, eds Faire l'histoire. 3 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1974.Google Scholar
Marrus, Michael R “Reflections on the Historiography of the Holocaust.” Journal of Modern History 66 (1994): 92–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitscherlich, Alexander, and Mitscherlich, Margarete. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens. Munich: Piper, 1967.Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre, ed Les lieux de mémoire. 7 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1984-92.Google Scholar
Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. New York: Harcourt, 1980.Google Scholar
Rabb, Theodore K., and Rotberg, Robert I., eds The New History, the 1980s and Beyond: Studies in Interdisciplinary History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in Victorian England. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Rousso, Henry. Le syndrome de Vichy, 1944-198…. Paris: Seuil, 1987.Google Scholar
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. Les assassins de la mémoire. Paris: Découverte, 1991.Google Scholar
Zeldin, Theodore. France, 1848-1945. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar