Impartial Stranger: History and Intertextuality in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireUniversity of Delaware Press, 1999 - 290 pages The analysis of particular cases of the interplay of dramatic and fictional forms in this eighteenth-century landmark provides a perspective on theories of historical narrative as well as an illustration of the problems encountered by Enlightenment historians in finding a satisfactory literary vehicle."--BOOK JACKET. |
Contents
| 7 | |
| 9 | |
Tropes of Transcendence | 44 |
Pandemonium and Romance | 96 |
The Genres of the Fact | 156 |
Translating the Sources Dialogue or Bricolage? | 195 |
Conclusion | 248 |
Notes | 251 |
Bibliography | 269 |
Index | 278 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
allusions ancient argues Attila Barthes Bayle bricolage Byzantine Cambridge Capitoline Hill century chapter claims classical consciousness criticism critique cultural David Hume Decline and Fall dialogue discourse Edited Edward Gibbon eighteenth eighteenth-century emperor emplotment epic Essays fact fiction figures of speech footnotes Frank Ankersmit function genres heteroglossia historian historiographical history writing human Hume Ibid ideal identity imagination imitation impartial stranger intertextual J. G. A. Pocock J. H. Hexter Justinian Kenner kind knowledge language linguistic literary literature means metaphor method mind mode narrative voice narrator narrator's notes notion novel object original past Peter Cosgrove philosophical Poggio Priscus reader reading reconstruction reference referential remarks rhetorical Roland Barthes Roman Empire romance Rome ruins says scholar scholarly seems sense significance sources spolia structure symbolic textual theories thought tion tive traditional trans transcendence translation trope truth University Press words York
Popular passages
Page 18 - Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, at once sublime and comic and whose profound ridiculousness indicates precisely the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them. Did he wish to express himself, he ought at least to know that the inner 'thing
Page 17 - Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.