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If I may interject, I thinbk interest level has everything to do with it. Many say Herodotus, Aristotle, and even Thucydides are dry, but I find reading them very interesting. I know I can read the most well-written and exciting historical account, but if I'm not all that interested in the topic…yawn.
Yes this is true. But none of those listed are “professional” historians by our standards. So they don't count. 🙂
That doesn't really make sense, Don, because any “professional” historian or student of history will be reading those as both history and historical accounts. Besides Herodotus and Thucydides, and even Aristotle to some degree, are historians by any standard, so they do count. 😉
Nope.The standards today are way different.
If I may interject, I thinbk interest level has everything to do with it. Many say Herodotus, Aristotle, and even Thucydides are dry, but I find reading them very interesting. I know I can read the most well-written and exciting historical account, but if I'm not all that interested in the topic…yawn.
Yes this is true. But none of those listed are “professional” historians by our standards. So they don't count. 🙂
Excuse me but … what's the question ?
Yes, busy student post your question here and we all might be able to help you rather than do it privately. We all might learn along with you in the process.
Well, I will be going to the Imperial Kriegsarchiv in Vienna in May and have already been in the contact with the archivists. I will let everybody know how it goes when I get back. I am actually excited to get some REAL primary source material in my hands. I am very curious to see if I will interpret the material the same as some other historians do.
Hopefully you won't, otherwise, what's the point?
How would one describe the coronation of Charlemagne in 800?
After a brief summary of the actual ceremony, one would then begin to describe the significance of the event and how it reshaped the political and ecclesiastical boundaries of Western Europe.
At which point the reader falls asleep and drools on their book. 😀 Don, I have said it before and will say it again, it is possible to write good rigorous history without making the readers heart stop through the boring way it is presented. You are a minority in that you apparently enjoy dry books, 80-90% of the rest of the world does not and that is why students hate history class.
Look guys, I like to read well written History just like you, but when you are talking about eponymous historical markers in ancient Greece, Gnosticism, bureaucratic practices in the Confederacy, or similar topics, it's going to be “dry.” Much of historical research is mundane, monotonous, and technical. It just is. Now if you are dealing with the Battle of the Bulge or Custer's Last Stand, then you are probably going to get a little better prose because the characters and events are exciting by nature.
YUP–I was informed and entertained
That's allowable in a survey level book. On a side note, I have read some of her journal responses to J.G.A. Pocock (her arch nemesis), and she can be very snide sometimes, but her intellectual prowess is without question. Of course her debates with Pocock were to build up her own academic name by picking a fight with a more established historian, but that's part of the game too.
How would one describe the coronation of Charlemagne in 800?
After a brief summary of the actual ceremony, one would then begin to describe the significance of the event and how it reshaped the political and ecclesiastical boundaries of Western Europe.
I do find it compelling that in no University are the History professors listed as working in the ScienceDepartment. Why is this?
I don't think we are talking about the same “science.” I'm not talking about “Laboratory History.” I'm talking about employing scientific method to historical approach. Historians are investigators who must use controlled approaches in their research. Serious academic scholars must then translate their controlled approach into a narrative via monograph, essay, or journal entry. I have no qualms about making the narrative flow, but the quality of historical research is not dependent on the quality of the prose. One can be an excellent historian while also being a mundane boring writer. For example: If I say “Napoleon was the chief architect of the last phase of the French Revolution” I would be historically accurate. Nothing in that statement is flashy or “over the top.” However, you would prefer I say something like “Napoleon forcefully reshaped the French Revolution into his own ambitious vision.” Both sentences say basically the same thing, but one is overly charged with qualifying adjectives that may accidentally place a negative connotation onto Napoleon that shouldn't be there. One too many adjectives can undo the objective science of the narrative itself….a damage not easily undone.
Wow–you are harsh. Very few people I knew or know would seriously consider “History” to be a”science”. It is a social science at best along with sociology and political science. All of which usevarious techniques of the “pure” sciences, but not of which can validy claim to be scientific eitherin their methodologies or their conclusions. This is what I was taught, what I experienced andwhat I believed. Chemistry, mathematics, physics and biology may claim to rest under the aegis ofscience, but we poor worshippers of Clio have had to find other quarters. Von Ranke will always berevered, but he did not change the game.I am reading Robert Merry's A Country of Vast Designs which has lots of well researched facts, meetsthe normal definition of concise and appears to be objective. Reading it is difficult because his does not entertain me as he writes. This is important as I have always had a short attention span and I expectto be excited as well as informed by my author.
Facts don't excite you? Are facts so boring that they must be polished up and embellished? Gibbon makes a nice case but his work wouldn't pass the mustard these days. He wouldn't make it out of any peer review alive (euphemistically of course). Authors like Shelby Foote and Gore Vidal play part time historian, but their primary interest is to sell books/novels to the ordinary History connoisseur. There's a market for their kind of work, and nothing wrong with what they write, but it's not grade A, in your face, let's contribute to knowledge research. It's like comparing the WWE with NCAA Greek wrestling. One is entertainment and masks some resemblance of a sport, while the other is the real deal. I want the real deal when I read. I want the years of painstaking research. I want to appreciate the nuggets of knowledge unearthed by the author. I get excited about reading things I didn't know before, and how these new found bits of knowledge tie into other historical markers and so on. If I want to be distracted with flowery language, I'll get a Danielle Steel novel, or Michael Crichton thriller. Give me Bernard Bailyn over Howard Zinn is all I'm saying. Technical writing, fact finding, data collecting, idea constructing, thesis building substance; not fireside chat History. Von Ranke you are my muse! ;D
Appleby is an Economic Determinist. That's her only downfall, but she is a copious researcher, and her survey books are very good.
This is what brought my thesis to a screeching halt. I need to hit the archives in South Carolina in order to complete my research. Inter-library loan is wonderful, but it doesn't do everything.
I'm not going to rehash my position on this, but readability does not mean “good storytelling.” Readability means concise, fact driven, descriptive, and objective. Once these criteria are met, then the literary aspect can come into play…within reason of course. In other words, after you have satisfied the “science” part of your work, then you can entertain the “art” aspect.
