The first volume in the eminent philosopherโs three-part examination of time and narrative, exploring their relationship in the context of historical writing.
Time and Narrative builds on Paul Ricoeurโs earlier analysis, in The Rule of Metaphor, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern.
Ricoeur finds a โhealthy circleโ between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustineโs theory of time and Aristotleโs theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s.
โThis work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion.โ โHayden White, History and Theory