History and its Literary Genres

It was traditionally accepted (already in Poetics by Aristotle) that historiographic representations of historical events were more objective than literary ones that belonged to the realm of fiction. In the last 30 years with the breaking of the “Rankeian” faith in the attainable scientific objectivity of historiography it became clear that these two disciplines are not as apart as we might have thought. However, it is not merely the question whether or not we can attain a certain degree of objectivity in both historiography and literature, which is at the core of this book, but rather, what are the means and consequences of contemporary interactions of historiography and art.To be able to open a debate on this issue, the editors gathered scientists from different professional and cultural background (historians, comparative literature scientists and musicologists from different parts of Europe). The result deconstructs not only a belief that historiography can and should be more objective than literature, it also shows that literary history at its very beginning in the 19th Century was crucially influenced by a popular concept of the so called organicism. Furthermore, it shows in several case studies the social consequences of particular representations of history and at the end even doubts that we can speak of historical genres in all forms of art (e.g. in the opera). Gasper Troha and Vanesa Matajc teach in the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at University of Ljubljana.Gregor Pompe teaches in the Department of Musicology at University of Ljubljana.