Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect

"In Figural Realism, White collects eight interrelated essays primarily concerned with the treatment of history in recent literary critical discourse. "'History' is not only an object we can study," White observes, "it is also and even primarily a certain kind of relationship to 'the past' mediated by a distinctive kind of written discourse. It is because historical discourse is actualized in its culturally significant form as a specific kind of writing that we may consider the relevance of literary theory to both the theory and the practice of historiography.""--Jacket.

Literary theory and historical writing -- Historical employment and the problem of truth in historical representation -- Formalist and contextualist strategies in historical explanation -- The modernist event -- Auerbach's literary history: Figural causation and modernist historicism -- Freud's tropology of dreaming -- Narrative, description, and tropology in Proust -- Form, reference, and ideology in musical discourse.