Ebook: Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe

In White's view, beyond the surface level of the historical text, there is a deep structural, or latent, content that is generally poetic and specifically linguistic in nature. This deeper content—the metahistorical element—indicates what an “appropriate” historical explanation should be.
In pursuing his thesis, White provides a book that will be of interest to philosophers as well as historians. He explicates the styles of such historians as Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, and Borchardt and of such philosophers of history as Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce.
Hayden White is director of the Center for the Humanities and Adjunct Professor of Humanities at Wesleyan University.