The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

by Gabrielle M. Spiegel

Postmodernism has challenged historians to look at historical texts in a new way and to be skeptical of the claim that one can confidently retrieve "fact" from historical writings. In The Past as Text historian Gabrielle M. Spiegel sets out to read long-familiar medieval histories and chronicles in light of the critical-theoretical problems raised by postmodernism. At the same time she urges a method of analysis that enables the reader to recognize these texts simultaneously as sacrifice and as works deeply embedded in a historically determinate, knowable social world. Arguing for the "social logic of the text," Spiegel provides historians with a way to retrieve the social significance and conceptual claims produced by these medieval or any historical writings.