A Choice of Fictions: Historians, Memory, and Evidence

TitleA Choice of Fictions: Historians, Memory, and Evidence
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1996
AuthorsJames Wilkinson
JournalPMLA
Volume111
Issue1
Pagination80-92
ISSN0030-8129
Abstract

Contemporary historians' definition of what constitutes historical evidence has expanded dramatically since the mid-1970s, but so have their doubts about the interpretation of evidence, especially for difficult and evanescent sources such as collective memory. As the ambitions of historical practice have challenged the limits of interpretation, the use of novel sources has necessitated recourse to "foundationalist" assumptions, without which errors in historical witnesses cannot be detected or evaluated.

URLhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/463135
DOI10.2307/463135
Short TitleA Choice of Fictions
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