The structure of an historical work

The structure of an historical work is not often discussed or even recognized as an important object of study. The histo¬rian's narrative is, after all, determined by the facts or events he narrates. We are far more likely to pay attention to the architecture of a play or novel than to that of an historical work, usually with good reason. The modern historian is him¬self often quite innocent of reflection or concern with the literary form of his narrative. Although his unconscious selec¬tion and arrangement of facts can, when subjected to rigorous analysis and criticism, reveal his approach and perspective and often his prejudices, only rarely does one meet an historian who gives careful attention to the literary presentation of his material. The reason for this is that of the two basic methods open to the historian for marshalling his data, the explicit method in which he simply narrates and analyzes the data consecutively is by far the easier and the more common one. The other, more subtle than the first, is the implicit method, in which the historian arranges and characterizes the facts in a manner that brings out or even creates their essential mean¬ing. With this method, the historian judges without seeming to judge, or, even more subtly, the historian makes the reader judge, unconsciously, in the way the historian wants, by lead¬ing him to form certain impressions about the material. The historian who masters this method is more than a recorder of facts—he is an artist.