Style in History

by Peter Gay and Michel Gay

Book Overview

What does an historian's style reveal? In this original and lucid guide to the proper reading of Gibbon, Ranke, Macaulay, and Burckhardt--great historians who were also great stylists--Peter Gay... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393305589
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.7" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Gibbon, Ranke, Macaulay, and Burckhardt: Stylish Historians

Peter Gay Style in History (1974, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., paperback edn., 1988) Peter Gay is one of our preeminent authorities about cultural history, and professionals historians in all fields can learn much from both the substance and style of his oeuvre. In particular, this thin book, principally essays about the style of four renowned historians of earlier times - Edward Gibbon (1737-94), Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59), and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) - is a treasury of observations about the historian's craft. According to Gay, "style" means both the literary devices employed by the historian, as well as his or her "tone of voice." Gay addresses both, and more, while cautioning that the historian is "under pressure to become a stylist while remaining a scientist." The back cover states that this book is a "guide to the proper reading of Gibbon, Ranke, Macaulay, and Burckhardt," but I found it more descriptive than prescriptive. Indeed, Gay expressly intended these essays to stimulate "debate over the definition of history." According to Gay, style is a function of both nature and nurture. It is "in part a gift of talent," but it also can be learned. For the aspiring historian who looks to Gay's four masters for guidance, many of his observations are profound. For instance, in discussing the belief of both Gibbon and Tacitus, the Roman historian who was one of Gibbon's principal sources, that "the supreme task of the historian [is] to probe historical actors to their depth," Gay concludes: "The chief use of the historian's penetration...[is] to dig beneath appearance to reality." Gay reports that Gibbon imagined himself, like Tacitus, to be a philosophical historian. (Gibbon believed that "the philosopher is a man who has conquered prejudices and given the critical spirit free play.") With regard to style, Gibbon employed a large arsenal of literary device, and Gay praises him for using irony, observing that, in Gibbon's writing, "gravity and levity coexisted without strain." Gay describes as "stunning" the economy with which Ranke wrote and praises his gifts of "speed, color, variety, freshness of diction, and superb control." According to Gay, Ranke believed that "self-imposed discipline alone brings excellence to all art." For instance, the one-sentence paragraph was one of Ranke's trademarks. Ranke is often credited with being the father of "scientific history," but, as Gay notes, Ranke approached his craft "as a branch of the storytelling art." In championing scientific history, Ranke extolled "the systematizing of research, the withdrawal of ego from presentation, the unremitting effort of objectivity, the submission of results to critical public scrutiny." Indeed, according to Gay: "Ranke's contribution to historical science...lay in his exalted view of documents." Furthermore, Gay offers the insight that Ranke "recognized that history is a progressive discipline." Ranke claimed "his ow