Publication Details

Abstract

The paper deals with those concepts of Hay den White, which concern the problem of historical interpretations and which are often taken as postmodern. In White’s historical interpretations three modes are involved: the mode of structuration (emplotment - romantic, comedial, tragic and ironic ones), the mode of explanation (formal idiographic, organistic, mechanistic and contextual ones), and the ideological mode (anarchistic, conservative, radical and liberal ones). As the investigations of historical descriptions show, they can be seen rather as symbolic structures, from which - not unlike from literary works - various, even opposing meanings can be generated.