Editing Historiography (section)

==Narrative==
According to [[Lawrence Stone]], [[narrative]] has traditionally been the main [[rhetorical device]] used by historians. In 1979, at a time when the new [[Social History]] was demanding a social-science model of analysis, Stone detected a move back toward the narrative. Stone defined narrative as follows: it is organized [[chronological]]ly; it is focused on a single coherent story; it is descriptive rather than analytical; it is concerned with people not abstract circumstances; and it deals with the particular and specific rather than the collective and statistical. He reported that, "More and more of the 'new historians' are now trying to discover what was going on inside people's heads in the past, and what it was like to live in the past, questions which inevitably lead back to the use of narrative."<ref>Lawrence Stone, "The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History", ''Past and Present'' 85 (Nov 1979) pp. 3–24, quote on p. 13 {{JSTOR|650677}}. {{Cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/650677 |title=The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History |jstor=650677 |access-date=25 April 2023 |archive-date=26 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230426032044/https://www.jstor.org/stable/650677 |url-status=bot: unknown |last1=Stone |first1=Lawrence |journal=Past & Present |date=1979 |issue=85 |pages=3–24 |doi=10.1093/past/85.1.3 }}.</ref>

Historians committed to a social science approach, however, have criticized the narrowness of narrative and its preference for anecdote over analysis, and its use of clever examples rather than statistically verified empirical regularities.<ref>J. Morgan Kousser, "The Revivalism of Narrative: A Response to Recent Criticisms of Quantitative History", ''Social Science History'' vol. 8, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 133–149; Eric H. Monkkonen, "The Dangers of Synthesis", ''American Historical Review'' 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1146–1157. {{doi|10.2307/1170990}}.</ref>