Historical Narrative

The historical narrative championed by Leopold von Ranke emerged in the early eighteenth century as a challenge to the teleological church works, naked hiagraphy, and Hegelian idealism. For Ranke, one composes history through amassing archival evidence. The historian's task, for Ranke, is to challenge memory and attack paradigms. Archives are now a prerequsite for anyone examining the past.

Narrative history is using methodology of archival research to drive assessments of the past. One could say it is nonreductive, though a better prhase would be an academic argument driven by sources. Source criticism is the driving force.

Chauncey's book seeks to recare the Bowery through a deeply contextualizing and ethnographic manner. As the historian claims, one gains the empathy necessary to critically examine the past through immersion in source material.

Historical narrative is different from history: how archival work operates is the difference between contingency and casual explanation, Chauncey repuidating a stereotype of New York: he gives us conditions of possibility: archival research explores condiitons of possibility: all sorts of things seem to make the Bowery come alive and "happen," but one only has access to it through deep contextualization.

History is more about answering the "how" to the "why". Diachronic vs. sychronic analysis. The former represents changes over time the latter is frozen in time. Tell a story vs. defining a moment. Archival documents are the residue of stuff we cant' get.

Agency vs. structure. Historians and rational choicests assign the more importance to the fortmer.