French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Zangara, Voir l'histoire. Théories anciennes du récit historique
History, Politics and Society
Review in Acta Fabula: L'écriture de l'histoire et son dehors, by Florian Louis
Adriana Zangara
Voir l'histoire
Théories anciennes du récit historique. IIe siècle avant J.C.-IIe siècle après.
Vrin - Éditions de l'EHESS
Coll. « Contextes »
ISBN (Vrin): 978-2-7116-1845-3
320 p.
36€
Back cover blurb:
If history, according to the ancient origin of the word, is vision, it is not merely in the sense of autopsy, that is to say, eyewitness testimony. For there exists a vision which, although usually obscured by the myth of the founding eye, is not and has never been an origin. Rather, instead of being the foundation of history, it is its effect: a fiction of vision created by narratives conceived and written to "make things seen," to enable readers to picture the past. Open to multiple and contradictory interpretations, the ostensive function attributed to historical narrative became, from the Hellenistic and Roman period onward, the subject of a debate whose stake was nothing less than the status of history, and whose substance was from the outset historiographical, philosophical, and rhetorical alike.
To untangle the threads of this ancient debate is fundamentally to reconnect with a questioning that has never ceased to be relevant: what do we see when history is "made visible" to us, and what does the historian do when making history visible to us?
Historian and philosopher, Adriana Zangara holds a doctorate from EHESS and conducts her research in the field of ancient historiography.
The study investigates how historical writing from the Hellenistic and Roman periods developed techniques designed to make readers picture past events. Adriana Zangara examines the philosophical, rhetorical, and historiographical debates surrounding the ostensive function of historical narrative, tracing how texts construct a fiction of vision rather than relying merely on eyewitness testimony.
Readers interested in the history of historiography, ancient philosophy, and the rhetorical strategies of classical writers may find this exploration relevant to their studies. The text situates these early debates within a broader intellectual tradition concerning how historical accounts construct visibility and how historians shape our understanding of the past.