GARY D. STARK.  "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Literatur f�r die
Geshichtswissenschaft:  A Historian's View," in The German
Quarterly.  Winter, 1990.


     Professor Stark's contribution is a beautifully-written
article concerned with the past reliance of historians on
(fictional) literature, and how recent literary criticism has
changed the way historians use these works.  His main point is
that literature may be gleaned for ('soft') data that can be
valuable in understand past perspectives and popular conceptions
(mentalit�).  This gleaning should not, however, be relied on as
providing evidential information for the social historian as it
sometimes had for the intellectual historian.  
     Stark quickly dismisses the former utilization of literature
by intellectual historians.  Their approach was to "see
literature as a kind of intellectual statement couched in special
artistic form (19)."   The intellectual historian's outmoded
concept as the author-as-"registrar" of social reality is the
weak point in his system.  As Stark points out, modern criticism
has effectively divorced the author from his literary work.  The
author is now a vector for the language-system itself (and the
text is only a manifestation of that system).<1>
     Even though the literary philosopher can claim, without
ridicule, that there are no conventional authors, or absolute
'historical documents' there still is some cause for social
historians to study literature.  Popular literature, claims
Stark, can give important insight into the popular mindset
(mentalit�).<2>  By paying careful attention to such factors as
sales and the relative fervor of acceptance of a given popular
work Stark claims one can divine with some accuracy the
intellectual life (or, at least, emotional life) of the lower
classes.<3>  The historian is warned away from using literature
as "a source of information and evidence (22)."  To do so would
be a futile proposition since , among other difficulties, the
writer's text is "highly mediated" (changes have been introduced
for aesthetic effect (23)).  
     On the other hand, Stark realizes that the imaginative
element of the type found in the authorial mind can be put to
good use by the historian.  Referring to Trevor-Roper, Stark
echoes the idea that possibility-history can help illuminate what
did happen.  In other words, positing alternate realities helps
the historian understand more fully the environment in which the
'realized' event occurred.  It is in this last section where
Stark's article crosses with other material covered in this
course.  Here the narrative is granted concession (a la Stone),
albeit a fictive version of the narrative.  The anti-factual
nature of this narrative brings to mind the obsessive computer
modeling of the American cliometricians.  In addition, Stark's
praise of the developing literary aesthetic awareness of
historians recalls Burke's interest developing well-written
histories that are aware of various literary and cinematic
traditions.  
     Stark argued effectively and ended on a note pleasing to
those to view history as transcendent narrative:  "Whatever else
it may be, history, we have to realize once again, is really a
branch of literature:  the writing of history is a poetic act ...
(29).  As pleasing as this conclusion may be, it does not
resonate cleanly with modern literary criticism.  Social history,
supposedly based on empirical fact, is thus literature, subject
to mediation and unwarranted synthesis.

Jason Carr
                             NOTES



<1>Does it follow, then, that text reveals only the language-
system and does not shed light on it's apparent "subject matter?"

<2>Does this realization stand alone, or is it a reaction against
the old-school literary canon?

<3>Note, however, that the illiterate lowest classes must
necessarily be exposed to this popular literature through the
filter of the higher, literate classes (22).
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/