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Historisk tidskrift 123:2 • 2003

Innehåll (Contents) 2003:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

I skuggan av nutiden? Om den äldrehistoriska syntesens inriktning och möjligheter.

Dick Harrison

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

In the Shadow of the Present. On the Focus and Possibilities of Historical Syntheses

This article discusses some of the basic limitations and possibilities linked to the writing of syntheses. A crucial issue is to what degree we are dependent on our own modern reality when writing about medieval and early modern topics. Does the synthetic approach more or less automatically turn into a teleological approach? And if so, how can this be avoided?

In order to elucidate the problem, three different kinds of syntheses are analysed: David Levine’s book At the Dawn of Modernity. Biology, Culture, and Material Life in Europe after the Year 1000 (2001); The History of the European Family (2001–, eds David I Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli); and Richard Fletcher’s book The Conversion of Europe. From Paganism to Christianity 371–1386 AD (1997). Of these three, Levine assumes an explicit teleological stand while Fletcher successfully attempts to avoid this by emphasising the role of individual actors on the historical scene. The History of the European Family also avoids the teleological approach but rather through its structure (many different authors, etc.) than by conscious narrative design.

The main argument of the article is that syntheses such as the one by David Levine, although well-written and generally to be recommended per se, often tell us more about the limits of our own knowledge and of present-day society than they reveal insights into historical possibilities and alternatives of the past. By allowing him- or herself to focus on individual actors, the writer of a synthesis may discover questions and answers that are not defined by our knowledge of the final historical result.