![]() ![]() ![]() This is especially so in specialist single subject areas. Reader interest is due, in large part, I suggest, to the microhistorian’s ability to fashion fascinating and even dramatic stories from data that can often appear uninspiring in its raw form. This aspect of microhistory, together with its writing style-in which engaging and compelling storytelling (often termed “narrative” in discussions of the genre) is prominent-is, indeed-although the resulting texts are not described as such-attracting more and more readers and writers. Yet microhistory’s focus on such subjects as single localities, events, lives, families and products has long been able to illuminate broader culture. Indeed, Stuart McIntyre’s detailed survey of the Australian discipline of history for the Australian Academy of the Humanities report, Knowing Ourselves and Others: The Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century, only mentions the term once-describing how in Australia ‘local history has metamorphosed into microhistory’ ( McIntyre 1998). The term is not widely utilised in Australia, with no publication classified as such in the Australian National Library’s catalogue. ![]() In the early 1990s, I discovered, and became highly enamoured of, the form of narrative history writing known as microhistory. ![]() Review of Nicola Humble, Andrew Dalby, Helen Saberi, Janet Clarkson, TEXT Vol 15 No 1 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |