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{"id":16445,"date":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","slug":"figuring-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/08\/figuring-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Figuring History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Timothy Furry\u2019s\u00a0Allegorizing History<\/a> is a careful, engaging study of the Venerable Bede\u2019s understanding of history, and of biblical hermeneutics. But perhaps the book\u2019s greatest interest comes at the end, in a more theoretical conclusion, where Furry draws on the work of Frank Ankersmit to argue that history-writing is invariably figural.<\/p>\n

Ankersmit distinguishes between historical description and historical representation. The latter is not merely an accumulation of facts but a proposal, a representation of the past \u201cin much the same way,\u201d Ankersmit writes, \u201cthat the work of art is a representation of what it depicts\u201d (quoted p. 114).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Representations don\u2019t float free of actual events or descriptions. Furry points to the role that the \u201csixth age\u201d plays in Bede\u2019s history of England, and observes that this \u201crepresentation\u201d depends on the real existence of Jesus, the actual event of His death and resurrection. Though they are representations of facts, representations have different criteria of evaluation than descriptions. Representations are not about the world but about speaking; a representation is a speaking abut speaking. As\u00a0Furry elaborates the analogy between history-writing and painting a portrait, he writes, \u201cProposals are suggestions or heuristics for understanding an historical event or person, and suggestions are not usually subject to propositional truth or falsity. It is true that we speak of portraits as true likenesses. However, likeness is not reducible to correspondence\u201d (121).<\/p>\n

Another oddity of the logic of representations is that they have no clear referent, in the way propositions and descriptions do. \u201cRepresentations relate things to things, not words to things,\u201d Furry writes (122). Representation \u201crequires language and sentences that are subject to truth and falsity\u201d yet the representation \u201cremains distinct from these claims\u201d (122). You can point to Da Vinci\u2019s paintings and drawings and artifacts; you cannot point to \u201cthe Renaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ankersmit doesn\u2019t think historians can avoid representation, and thus they cannot avoid using concepts that elude simple evaluation according to truth and falsity. Working from Bede, Furry concludes from this that \u201cfigural\u201d conceptualities are inevitable in history-writing. He argues that \u201chistorical writing itself is intrinsically figural insofar as it is representational\u201d (126).<\/p>\n

Despite being a historian and a figural exegete, Bede doesn\u2019t consistently link the two. Furry exploits Bede\u2019s inconsistencies to argue that the use of the notion of a \u201csixth age\u201d inaugurated by Christ\u2019s death and resurrection has the same historiographical function as \u201cclaims about the Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and revolutions\u201d (129). Thus, the objection \u201cthat Bede\u2019s language of the sixth age is unhistorical or theological (and therefore not historical) simply reveal an aesthetic (representation) bias that constitutes the practice of history and how it is conceived\u201d (129).<\/p>\n

Furry\u2019s argument is persuasive and accomplishes the \u201cground-clearing\u201d that he aims at. It opens up ground for history-writing that is more coherent with the Christian figural reading of Scripture than Bede\u2019s own.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"