What Was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe

Anthony Grafton

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139196956

From the late fifteenth century onwards, scholars across Europe began to write books about how to read and evaluate histories. These pioneering works grew from complex early modern debates about law, religion and classical scholarship. Anthony Grafton's book is based on his Trevelyan Lectures of 2005, and it proves to be a powerful and imaginative exploration of some central themes in the history of European ideas. Grafton explains why so many of these works were written, why they attained so much insight – and why, in the centuries that followed, most scholars gradually forgot that they had existed. Elegant and accessible, What Was History? is a deliberate evocation of E. H. Carr's celebrated Trevelyan Lectures, What Is History?.

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What Was History?

The Art of History in Early Modern Europe

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-ii

Contents
pp iii-iii

List of illustrations
pp iv-iv

Preface
pp v-viii

1 - Historical criticism in early modern Europe
pp 1-61

2 - The origins of the ars historica: a question mal posée?
pp 62-122

3 - Method and madness in the ars historica: three case studies
pp 123-188

4 - Death of a genre
pp 189-254

Bibliography
pp 255-304

Index
pp 305-319

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What Was History?

The Art of History in Early Modern Europe

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