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

Elegant and accessible, this book is a powerful and imaginative exploration of themes in the history of European ideas.

Anthony Grafton (Author)

9781107606159, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 March 2012

330 pages
21.5 x 13.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.5 kg

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?.

List of plates
1. Historical criticism in early modern Europe
2. The origins of the Ars historica: a question mal posée?
3. Method and madness in the Ars historica: three case studies
4. Death of a genre
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], European history [HBJD]