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Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages
John Hines2014, Folklore
Back in 1995, Daniel Woolf observed that 'the global dominance of Western academic historical practices' has led to a sense, particularly beyond the west, that 'not just history, but historiography. .. has been written by the victors' (D. Woolf, 'Historiography,' New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. M. C. Horowitz (New York, 2005), p. 1). Past dominance can't be rectified even by heroic labour, but the record can be set straight. Nearly twenty years later, as general editor of the five-volume Oxford History of Historical Writing, Woolf has facilitated the critical surveys of materials that readers need to consider the circumstances that have shaped historical thought and practice on a truly global scale. Compiled by an international team of some 150 contributors, this series has already begun to stimulate new research and innovative teaching within and beyond the west, addressing if not correcting, any worries over the intellectual and cultural range of historical practice beyond Europe. Of course any claim to a definitive History seems to presume the timeless authority that authors in this series seek to question. Nevertheless, its broad geographical, chronological and thematic range will encourage a comparative approach to historical thought and practice that can only enrich the many fields that draw on historical writing. Although the chapters in this particular volume focus on the writing of history during a period that witnessed the spread of printing and literacy, many contributors consider textuality with reference to oral, visual and material expression-and to their associated social values. It is a relief to know that the final volume in this series considers the methodological problems that this broad sweep entails. If historians have grown increasingly self-conscious about how we ought to think, teach and write about the past, to say nothing of what we assume of the past of people and places beyond our immediate experience, this volume provides a reassuring resource. The editors have organized this volume geographically, 'by following the sun' as well as by following the invention of written historical records; the chapters (numbering over thirty-three) start with 'Chinese official historical writing under the Ming and Qing' before reaching 'Historical writing in colonial and revolutionary America'. Peter Burke's chapter on the emergence of critical standards for confirming historical bs_bs_banner
