The second volume of The Ethics of Narrative completes the project of bringing together nearly all of Hayden White's uncollected essays from the last two decades of his life, including articles, essays, and previously unpublished lectures. As in the first volume, volume two features White's trenchant articulations of his influential theories, as well as his explorations of a wide range of ideas and authors at the frontiers of critical theory, literature, and historical studies. These include the concept of utopia in history, modernism and postmodernism, constructivism, the conceptualization of historical periods such as "the Sixties" and "the Enlightenment," the representation of the Holocaust in scholarly and literary writing, as well as essays on Frank Kermode, Saul Friedländer, and Krzysztof Pomian.
Hayden White Book order
Hayden White, a historian operating within the tradition of literary criticism, is renowned for his seminal work on historical imagination. He meticulously analyzed the narratives of 19th and 20th-century historians and philosophers, proposing that historical discourse is a form of fiction classifiable by its structure and linguistic use. White challenged the notion of objective historical accounts, arguing that historians employ unarticulated assumptions in selecting and interpreting events. His work fundamentally altered the theory of history by applying rhetorical tropes to narrative discourse, revealing deeper insights into authorial attitudes and historical contexts.







- 2022
- 2020
Figural Realism
- 222 pages
- 8 hours of reading
It is because historical discourse is actualized in its culturally significant form as a specific kind of writing that we may consider the relevance of literary theory to both the theory and the practice of historiography.
- 2015
Przeszłość praktyczna to kolejny tom antologii tekstów uznanego za najwybitniejszego teoretyka historii w świecie anglojęzycznym, amerykańskiego badacza teorii i historii historiografii - Haydena White’a. Po wydanej przez Universitas w 2000 roku Poetyce pisarstwa historycznego (red. Ewa Domańska i Marek Wilczyński; wydanie II poprawione i uzupełnione 2010) oraz tomie Proza historyczna (red. Ewa Domańska, 2009), proponowany zbiór będzie zawierać zarówno nowe teksty White’a opublikowane w ciągu ostatnich sześciu lat, jak i artykuły starsze, które warto przywołać w związku z rosnącym w Polsce zainteresowaniem posthumanizmem, utopią, myśleniem systemowym, postkolonialnym podejściem do badań przeszłości Europy Wschodniej, oraz współczesną sztuką jako medium badania przeszłości.
- 2010
The Fiction of Narrative
- 424 pages
- 15 hours of reading
The Fiction of Narrative traces the arc and evolution of White's field- defining thought and will become standard reading for students and scholars of historiography, the theory of history, and literary studies.
- 2010
Kniha Tropika diskursu Haydena Whitea, který je znám svým pojetím "metahistorie", jež klade důraz na narativní povahu historického diskursu, patří v humanitních vědách již ke klasickým dílům. Jde svým způsobem o autorovu originální "rozpravu o metodě", teorii toho, co by bylo možné nazvat tropologickým rozuměním. Její význam se ani zdaleka neomezuje na techniku literárního rozboru či interpretaci historie, jejím základem je filosoficky fundované, syntetické pojetí kognitivního vztahu k realitě, prostředkované právě "diskursem". V tomto smyslu je Whiteova kniha svébytnou a důležitou alternativou jak k tradiční i moderní hermeneutice (H. G. Gadamer), tak například k Ricoeurově narativnímu porozumění. Tropus podle Whitea není ani ozdoba řeči, ani technika omezující se na umělecký jazyk, nýbrž nástroj, jehož funkcí je snaha o adekvátnější uchopení popisované skutečnosti. Interpretace historických, literárních či teoretických textů se pak neukazuje jako (subjektivní) omezení, nýbrž jako obecná podmínka kulturní racionality.
- 1991
Metahistory
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
This book will be of interest to anyone-in any discipline-who takes the past as a serious object of study.
- 1990
The Content of the Form
- 264 pages
- 10 hours of reading
The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in the content of the form,in the way our narrative capacities transform the present into a fulfillment of a past from which we would wish to have descended.
- 1987
The Content of the Form
Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
- 264 pages
- 10 hours of reading
"[White] has clearly made significant advances in laying a foundation for a better understanding of the intricate interaction between narrative representation and what it purports to represent in both history and literature."--American Historical Review.
- 1986
Mit den vier Tropen der Metapher, der Metonymie, der Synekdoche und der Ironie erfasst er systematisch die ? poetische Logik? des historischen Diskurses und bezieht dessen Formen der Darstellung historischen Geschehens auf Grundformen der menschlichen Weltaneignung.

