Lo specchio di Erodoto

The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics

by François Hartog

Herodotus's great work is not only an account of the momentous historical conflict between the Greeks and the Persians but also the earliest sustained exploration in the West of the problem of cultural difference. François Hartog asks fundamental questions about how Herodotus represented this difference. How did he and his readers understand the customs and beliefs of those who were not Greek? How did the historian convince his readers that his account of other peoples was reliable? How is it possible to comprehend a way of life radically different from one's own? What are the linguistic, rhetorical, and philosophical means by which Herodotus fashions his text into a mirror of the marginal and unknown? In answering these questions, Hartog transforms our understanding of the "father of history." His Herodotus is less the chronicler of a victorious Greece than a brilliant writer in pursuit of otherness.

Genres: History, Classics, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Theory

376 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 1980

About the author

François Hartog is a French historian and Chair of Modern and Antique Historiography at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Born in 1946, Hartog attended the 'École normale supérieure. A former student of Jean-Pierre Vernant and assistant to Reinhart Koselleck, Hartog’s early work focused on the intellectual history of ancient Greece and historiography, while his recent work deals mainly with temporality.

His most recent book to be published in English, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (Columbia University Press, 2015, translated by Saskia Brown), engages our “ways of relating to the past, present, and future.” Hartog also tackles the concept of “presentism,” or how we adhere to present-day ideas to attempt to understand the past via interpretations of writing as the “motor of history” and the “contradictory qualities of our contemporary presentist relation to time.”

Hartog’s research frequently attempts to situate the progressions of time and memory against the realities of repetition and methodologies of understanding history from various theoretical reference points.

His other publications include Mémoire d'Ulysse: récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne (Gallimard, 1996), Anciens, modernes, sauvages (Galaade, 2005), and Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne (La Découverte, 2007), as well as countless articles, lectures, and, more recently, a series of podcasts on ancient and modern history.

Selected Bibliography
-Le Miroir d'Hérodote. Essai sur la représentation de l'autre, Gallimard, 1980.

-Le XIXe siècle et l'histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges, PUF, 1988.

-Les Usages politiques du passé, avec Jacques Revel, EHESS, 2001,

-Régimes d'historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Le Seuil, 2002 (Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, Columbia University Press, 2015; translated by Saskia Brown)

-Anciens, modernes, sauvages, Galaade, 2005.

-Évidence de l'histoire. Ce que voient les historiens, EHESS, 2005.

-Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne, La Découverte, 2007.

-Croire en l'histoire, Flammarion, 2013.

-Partir pour la Grèce, Flammarion, 2015.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book is really enlightening as it takes the scythian discourse and dissects in great detail. Hartog does an excellent job of showing how much of the logos itself; the ethnographic framing of the Scythians, certain actions and interactions between them and the Persians - are all finely crafted to make the narrative intelligeable to a Greek audience. Often this takes the form of the Scythians and Persians as being stand-ins for the Greeks in their interactions between each other. The second half of the book is a bit more of a slog.

[Lauralys ~ L'Histoire Des Mots · Rating 1 out of 5]

J'ai été obligée de le lire pour les cours et franchement ça a été un supplice. Le dernier chapitre n'est qu'une répétition de tout le bouquin faisant office de conclusion SAUF qu'il y a une conclusion aussi. L'auteur passe l'ouvrage à dire Oui mais Non et je sais que c'est dû à l'ouvrage même d'Hérodote. Mais sincèrement j'en voyais pas la fin. J'ai compris l'intérêt de la moitié de l'ouvrage, mais sincèrement l'autre moitié m'a semblé tellement inutile. Un emploi de terme rendant plus compliqué qu'autre chose quelque chose qui pourrait être simple. Des exemples à rallonges tellement longs que tu en perds pourquoi il parle de ça. Et enfin bcp trop de répétitions qui rallongent l'ouvrage déjà biiiien long. Bref c'était LONG et franchement pas intéressant...

[Adrienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m afraid I found this book incredibly tedious... too much in the weeds and lacking a direction or big picture view. I’m always fascinated by Greek culture, so a number of the details were really interesting, but I feel the author failed to paint the picture of Herodotus as a mirror of his time, and the original historian of Greek civilisation that he is.