서술 텍스트 읽기 방법론: 소설과 역사를 중심으로

Theoretical Introduction to the Reading of Narrative Text: The Cases of the Novel and History

Although the novel and history are established disciplines with their own characters, they have a number of things in common. Both deal with the human life and produce meaningful teachings. Both in essence have the form of representation of the reality; imaginary reality and factual one. Many of western historians consider themselves to be literary figures. But in Arab tradition history has been thought to belong to the domain of science, not literature. The dividing wall between them is quite firm. After the linguistic tum there was an increasing trend that saw historical text as a language structure and scholars had skeptical view on the neutrality and fairness of the truth of history. They continued to remind that historical truth is nothing but a dream, on the basis of argument that any verbal representation of reality cannot be complete. Language, for them, is inevitably figural, imaginative and metaphorical. Many theories, schools and movements took part in the shaping of the new trend. To get a deeper information I picked up Hayden White's theory on historical representation. He explained that historical text was not special or exceptional in being a kind of discourse, and that it surely appears in the form of narrative. For him historians' use of narrative as a means of presentation has lots of significances. It may be pointed out that White's view paid little attention to the content plane in comparison with the formal aspect. This explains why he lessened the importance of the difference between fact and imagination, the traditionally crucial point between history and the novel. It is mentioned in this essay that recently some Arab historians, too, began to see the historical text as a narrative form. More time is needed to say whether it is the beginning of a serious attempt or not.