History and Criticism

LaCapra offers an intriguing collection of essays to support both his enthusiasm for intellectual history... and his concern about the 'excesses' he finds in techniques and practices of the new social history. Admitting that the essays are polemical with a 'measure of exaggeration and a stylization of arguments,' LaCapra seeks to restore the historian's appreciation for 'great' literature, the techniques of literary criticism, and the rhetoric that must be studied and analyzed to integrate this criticism into historical analysis. LaCapra calls for an engaged dialogue with the past on both an objective and a subjective plane.... [He] shows great familiarity with (and due respect for) recent innovations of social historians and theoreticians using the Annales approach. As a critique of their work as well as a defense of LaCapra's alternatives, this is a valuable study.

-- Ch