Metahistory

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Resources

From the Greek meta “about”.

According to Northrop Frye (Fables of Identity: Studies in PoeticMythology (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1963), metahistory is a synonym for the philosophy of history, or, at a less exalted but no less powerful level, of a system of anthropological or philosophical principles which underpin the knowledge of any historical account and are tacitly or explicitly believed by the historian to run throughout human experience, making it possible to ground an historical account in principles which are themselves not subject to the one great law of history – that everything is mutable. A famous example of a metahistorical position is found in Marx's dictum “all history is the history of class struggle”. Metahistory is therefore on a par with the idea

413 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Metahistory". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=716, accessed 19 March 2024.]

716 Metahistory 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.