A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. Some historians are recognized by publications or training and experience. "Historian" became a professional occupation in the late nineteenth century as research universities were emerging in Germany and elsewhere.
157-469: In the 19th century scholars used to study ancient Greek and Roman historians to see how generally reliable they were. In recent decades, however, scholars have focused more on the constructions, genres, and meanings that ancient historians sought to convey to their audiences. History is always written with contemporary concerns and ancient historians wrote their histories in response to the needs of their times. Out of thousands of Greek and Roman historians, only
314-528: A "preventative war" forced on Hitler by an impending Soviet attack; and his complaints that much scholarship on the Shoah expressed the views of "biased" Jewish historians. Evans characterized Nolte's statements as crossing the line into Holocaust denial and he singled out Nolte's rationalization that since the victors write history , the only reason why the Third Reich is seen as evil is because it lost
471-594: A PhD degree for new full-time hires. A scholarly thesis, such as a doctoral dissertation, is now regarded as the baseline qualification for a professional historian. However, some historians still gain recognition based on published (academic) works and the award of fellowships by academic bodies like the Royal Historical Society . Publication is increasingly required by smaller schools, so graduate papers become journal articles and PhD dissertations become published monographs. The graduate student experience
628-575: A Scottish historian, and the Historiographer Royal published the History of Scotland 1542 – 1603 , in 1759 and his most famous work, The history of the reign of Charles V in 1769. His scholarship was painstaking for the time and he was able to access a large number of documentary sources that had previously been unstudied. He was also one of the first historians who understood the importance of general and universally applicable ideas in
785-405: A belief that history was a type of science. However, in the 20th century historians incorporated social science dimensions like politics, economy, and culture in their historiography, including postmodernism. Since the 1980s there has been a special interest in the memories and commemoration of past events. History by its nature is prone to continuous debate, and historians tend to be divided. There
942-402: A biography of Adolf Hitler. ) Evans' In Defence of History defends the discipline of history against postmodernist skepticism of its value. The limitations of our ability to understand and learn from the past notwithstanding, it is still possible, he argues, to reconstruct past events. Evans suggests that the spread in the 1980s and 1990s of post-modernist theories, which declare that history
1099-453: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows
1256-463: A career that spanned much of the century, Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources ( empiricism ), an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics ( aussenpolitik ). Sources had to be hard, not speculations and rationalizations. His credo was to write history the way it was. He insisted on primary sources with proven authenticity. The term Whig history
1413-753: A chance to correct the distortions of public memory, this is it." The Third Reich trilogy has been, or is being translated, into sixteen foreign languages. In 2013, Evans delivered the Menachem Stern Jerusalem Lectures to the Historical Society of Israel, publishing them in 2014 as Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History . The book puts forward a variety of arguments against the use of long-range alternative historical timelines as an aid to serious historical understanding. In "Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and
1570-610: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to
1727-854: A country torn apart by the First World War , the terms of the Treaty of Versailles , hyperinflation and the Great Depression moved towards an increasingly authoritarian solution. The book explains in detail Adolf Hitler 's appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 and how the Nazis transformed Germany into a one party dictatorship. The first volume featured highly favourable words of praise from Evans's friend Ian Kershaw on its cover. The second volume, The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939: How
SECTION 10
#17327659584141884-531: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of
2041-562: A highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians , who contributed to history from below and class structure in early capitalist society. Members included Christopher Hill , Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson . World history , as a distinct field of historical study, emerged as an independent academic field in the 1980s. It focused on the examination of history from a global perspective and looked for common patterns that emerged across all cultures. Arnold J. Toynbee 's ten-volume A Study of History , written between 1933 and 1954,
2198-677: A long time to come." Ed Ericson says: Evans masterfully interweaves testimony that has come to light in the intervening decades with learned judgments from hundreds of authors to create a balanced and thoughtful narrative. This book, therefore, will assuredly become the definitive work on The Third Reich at War. The first volume, The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany (published by Penguin in 2003), shows how
2355-571: A period in Europe's cultural history that represented a break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world. The nineteen-volume work covered French history from Charlemagne to the outbreak of the Revolution . Michelet was one of the first historians to shift the emphasis of history to the common people, rather than the leaders and institutions of
2512-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to
2669-458: A powerful witness in Lipstadt's ultimately successful defence. In his expert witness report he wrote: Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give
2826-417: A regular academic career, must entice other scholars to help him; and with the present [high] demand for college teachers, this is no easy task. An undergraduate history degree is often used as a stepping stone to graduate studies in business or law. Many historians are employed at universities and other facilities for post-secondary education. In addition, it is normal for colleges and universities to require
2983-461: A reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. The cross-examination of Evans by Irving was noted for the high degree of personal dislike between the two men. Such was the degree of dislike that Irving challenged Evans on very minor points, such as Evans doubting
3140-528: A richer selection of courses on the histories of other countries in British universities than students from other countries could in their own countries. On 7 February 2019, Evans gave a lecture at Chancellor's Hall in the University of London 's Senate House to launch his new biography of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm , A Life in History . At the time, a boycott of the University of London including
3297-531: A sense of "otherness". He said one reason that he was drawn to the study of modern German history in the late 1960s was his identification of parallels between the Vietnam War and German imperialism. He admired the work of Fritz Fischer , whom he credits with inspiring him to study modern German history. Evans first established his academic reputation with his publications on the German Empire . In
SECTION 20
#17327659584143454-469: A simple accounting of events, but strived on the contrary to pose and solve problems and, neglecting surface disturbances, to observe the long and medium-term evolution of economy, society, and civilisation. Marxist historiography developed as a school of historiography influenced by the chief tenets of Marxism , including the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of
3611-474: A single scholar. Reviewer Peter Mansoor says, "The Third Reich at War is a superb piece of scholarship that is likely to emerge as the definitive account of life and death inside Hitler's blood soaked Third Reich." Robert Citino says, "Read together, the three volumes constitute a remarkably comprehensive treatment of the origins, course, and death of the Hitler regime, and are likely to be standard works for
3768-453: A study of class conflict and liberal government in 19th-century Germany using the example of Hamburg’s cholera epidemics and applying statistical methods to the exploration of social inequality in an industrializing society, and Rituals of Retribution (1996), a study of capital punishment in German history applying structural anthropological concepts to the rituals of public execution up to
3925-600: A total of about £9000. Biographer Leslie Stephen wrote that thereafter, "His fame was as rapid as it has been lasting." The tumultuous events surrounding the French Revolution inspired much of the historiography and analysis of the early 19th century. Interest in the 1688 Glorious Revolution was also rekindled by the Great Reform Act of 1832 in England. Thomas Carlyle published his magnum opus,
4082-569: A whole range of historical subjects, political opinions, and methodological approaches and has been expressed in many different ways". In 1978, as editor of a collection of essays by young British historians entitled Society And Politics in Wilhelmine Germany , he launched a critique of the 'top-down' approach of the Bielefeld School associated with Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka regarding Wilhelmine Germany . With
4239-481: Is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008). Evans was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge from 2008 until he retired in 2014, and President of Cambridge's Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014. Evans
4396-409: Is being translated into Dutch, Spanish, German, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian. He has written a biography on the historian Eric Hobsbawm entitled Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History . From 2013 to 2018 he was principal investigator in a £1.6 million Leverhulme Programme Grant on conspiracy theories and is preparing work based on the findings of the project. In 2008, Evans
4553-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when
4710-547: Is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of
4867-467: Is difficult—those who finish their doctorate in the United States take on average 8 or more years; funding is scarce except at a few very rich universities. Being a teaching assistant in a course is required in some programs; in others it is a paid opportunity awarded a fraction of the students. Until the 1970s it was rare for graduate programs to teach how to teach; the assumption was that teaching
Historian - Misplaced Pages Continue
5024-411: Is especially true of narrative history, which nonprofessionals have all but taken over. The gradual withering of the narrative impulse in favor of the analytical urge among professional academic historians has resulted in a virtual abdication of the oldest and most honored role of the historian, that of storyteller. Having abdicated... the professional is in a poor position to patronize amateurs who fulfill
5181-604: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when
5338-558: Is no past that is commonly agreed upon, since there are competing histories (e.g., of elites, non-elites, men, women, races, etc.). It is widely accepted that "strict objectivity is epistemologically unattainable for historians". Historians rarely articulate their conception of objectivity or discuss it in detail. And like in other professions, historians rarely analyze themselves or their activity. In practice, "specific canons of historical proof are neither widely observed nor generally agreed upon" among professional historians. Though objectivity
5495-417: Is not seen as possible in historical practice: a historian's interest inevitably influences their judgement (what information to use and omit, how to present the information, etc.); the sources used by historians for their history all have bias, and historians are products of their culture, concepts, and beliefs. Racial and cultural biases can play major roles in national histories, which often ignore or downplay
5652-637: Is often seen as the goal of those who work on history, in practice there is no convergence on anything in particular. Historical scholarship is never value free since historian's writings are impacted by the frameworks of their times. Some scholars of history have observed that there are no particular standards for historical fields such as religion, art, science, democracy, and social justice as these are by their nature 'essentially contested' fields, such that they require diverse tools particular to each field beforehand in order to interpret topics from those fields. There are three commonly held reasons why avoiding bias
5809-477: Is poor and getting worse, with many relegated to part-time "adjunct" teaching jobs with low pay and no benefits. C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999), Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, cautioned that the academicians had themselves abdicated their role as storytellers: Professionals do well to apply the term "amateur" with caution to the historian outside their ranks. The word does have deprecatory and patronizing connotations that occasionally backfire. This
5966-493: Is solely the construct of the historian and depict the rationalist tradition of the West as a form of oppression, was not necessarily left-wing or progressive, for by denying the possibility of accessing past facts, it had also done much to increase the appeal of Holocaust denial. Evans is probably best known to the general public in the role of an expert witness for the defence in the high-profile libel case of David Irving against
6123-433: Is the first historian to have to apply for the post and be interviewed by a Board of Electors, including Cambridge's Vice-Chancellor, Alison Richard , and representatives of the history faculty and the university, as well as external assessors from Yale, Harvard, Oxford and London. The board selected a shortlist of four, each of whom was asked to give a presentation to the entire Cambridge history faculty. The shortlist of four
6280-433: Is the history of the arts, of commerce, of civilization – in a word, – of the human mind." He broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history, and achievements in the arts and sciences. He was the first scholar to make a serious attempt to write the history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks, and emphasizing economics, culture, and political history. At
6437-505: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer
Historian - Misplaced Pages Continue
6594-635: The Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial, the court relied on Richard Evan's witness report which mentioned "objective historian" in the same vein as the reasonable person , and reminiscent of the standard traditionally used in English law of " the man on the Clapham omnibus ". This was necessary so that there would be a legal benchmark to compare and contrast the scholarship of an objective historian against
6751-598: The Penguin History of Europe . It has been widely reviewed. Gerard De Groot, writing in The Times , commented that the book "chronicles a turbulent and confusing century with wonderful clarity and verve...in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty ... transnational history at its finest." Dominic Sandbrook, in The Sunday Times , described it as "dazzlingly erudite and entertaining". It has been, or
6908-590: The Yale Law Journal , Wendie E. Schneider distils these seven points for what he meant by an objective historian: Schneider uses the concept of the "objective historian" to suggest that this could be an aid in assessing what makes a historian suitable as expert witnesses under the Daubert standard in the United States . Schneider proposed this, because, in her opinion, Irving could not have passed
7065-492: The science of biography , science of hadith and Isnad (chain of transmission). They later applied these methodologies to other historical figures in the Islamic civilization . Famous historians in this tradition include Urwah (d. 712), Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 728), Ibn Ishaq (d. 761), al-Waqidi (745–822), Ibn Hisham (d. 834), Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870) and Ibn Hajar (1372–1449). During
7222-640: The Age of Enlightenment , the modern development of historiography through the application of scrupulous methods began. French philosophe Voltaire (1694–1778) had an enormous influence on the art of history writing. His best-known histories are The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). "My chief object," he wrote in 1739, "is not political or military history, it
7379-611: The Historikerstreit were set forth in his 1989 book, In Hitler's Shadow . In that book, Evans took issue with Nolte's acceptance of the Commissar Order as a legitimate military order; with Nolte's argument that the Einsatzgruppen massacres of Ukrainian Jews were a justifiable "preventive security" response to Soviet partisan attacks; his description (citing Viktor Suvorov ) of Operation Barbarossa as
7536-573: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of
7693-510: The Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only
7850-897: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,
8007-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within
SECTION 50
#17327659584148164-677: The Middle Ages . They wrote about the history of Jesus Christ, that of the Church and that of their patrons, the dynastic history of the local rulers. In the Early Middle Ages historical writing often took the form of annals or chronicles recording events year by year, but this style tended to hamper the analysis of events and causes. An example of this type of writing is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles , which were
8321-462: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by
8478-639: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of
8635-574: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about
8792-571: The Senate House , organised by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and supported by a number of high-profile politicians, journalists and academics, including John McDonnell , Owen Jones , Ken Loach and David Graeber in order to pressure University of London to bring their outsourced maintenance staff back in house, was in place. Claiming it was hypocritical breaking a boycott in support of workers' rights to give
8949-427: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates
9106-432: The intentionalist theories of Hillgruber and Hildebrand. and criticized Stürmer's excessive focus on political history and overlooking of social conditions, as a regression to the outmoded great man theory of history. For his part Evans praised Sir Ian Kershaw , who wrote that "The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference". (It was Evans who first suggested to Kershaw that he undertake to write
9263-408: The "Jewish Question" on the "back-burner" until after the war. Evans chose to accept the interpretation of the memo put forward by Eberhard Jäckel in the 1970s; Irving chose to interpret the memo literally and taunted Evans by saying, "It is a terrible problem, is it not that we are faced with this tantalizing plate of crumbs and morsels of what should have provided the final smoking gun, and nowhere
9420-477: The 16th century BCE, and it includes many treatises on specific subjects and individual biographies of prominent people and also explores the lives and deeds of commoners, both contemporary and those of previous eras. Christian historiography began early, perhaps as early as Luke-Acts , which is the primary source for the Apostolic Age . Writing history was popular among Christian monks and clergy in
9577-683: The American historian Deborah Lipstadt in 2000, Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt . Lipstadt was sued for libel by Irving, after she referred to him as a "Holocaust denier" and "an ardent follower of Adolf Hitler" in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust . Lipstadt further accused Irving of "distorting evidence and manipulating documents to serve his own purposes...[as well as] skewing documents and misrepresenting data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions, particularly those that exonerate Hitler." Evans acted as an expert witness for
SECTION 60
#17327659584149734-545: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw
9891-800: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but
10048-560: The European Continent" (2009, an expanded version of his Inaugural Lecture as Regius Professor), he explored the reasons why so many British historians have made such major contributions to the historical understanding of other European countries. The Third Reich in History and Memory (2015) is a collection of 28 articles and review essays on modern German history published since the turn of the century. In 2016, Evans published The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 , volume 7 in
10205-500: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of
10362-772: The Greek tradition . While early Roman works were still written in Greek, the Origines , composed by the Roman statesman Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE), was written in Latin, in a conscious effort to counteract Greek cultural influence. Strabo (63 BCE – c. 24 CE ) was an important exponent of the Greco-Roman tradition of combining geography with history, presenting a descriptive history of peoples and places known to his era. Livy (59 BCE – 17 CE) records
10519-836: The History Channel which examined the Valkyrie bomb plot against Hitler in July 1944. He writes reviews of history books for the London Review of Books , the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian , as well as historical reflections on recent events for American magazines and websites, including Foreign Policy , The Nation , and Vox . Evans has been co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary History since 2000, and has also served as Deputy Chair of
10676-417: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting
10833-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on
10990-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of
11147-470: The Mediterranean region. The earliest known critical historical works were The Histories , composed by Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 – c. 425 BCE ) who later became known as the "father of history" ( Cicero ). Herodotus attempted to distinguish between more and less reliable accounts and personally conducted research by travelling extensively, giving written accounts of various Mediterranean cultures. Although Herodotus' overall emphasis lay on
11304-610: The Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation (published by Penguin in 2005), covers the years of Nazi rule between 1933 and 1939. The final chapter examines the road to the Second World War, but the real focus is on life inside the Third Reich. Evans allows small stories of key individuals to illustrate many of the key social, economic and cultural events of the period. Richard Overy described this installment of
11461-988: The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a UK government non-departmental public body formed to make recommendations to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the restitution of cultural objects looted during the Nazi era. He has been a judge of the Wolfson History Prize, the UK's richest history book award, for over twenty years. In 2011, Evans became involved in a polemical exchange of letters with Peter Baldwin after agreeing with Leif Jerram, who wrote in Cosmopolitan Islanders in 2009 that students in Britain could find
11618-762: The Working Class in England in 1844 , which was salient in creating the socialist impetus in British politics from then on, e.g. the Fabian Society . R. H. Tawney 's The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912) and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), reflected his ethical concerns and preoccupations in economic history . A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946 and became
11775-581: The actions and characters of men, he also attributed an important role to divinity in the determination of historical events. Thucydides largely eliminated divine causality in his account of the war between Athens and Sparta, establishing a rationalistic element that set a precedent for subsequent Western historical writings. He was also the first to distinguish between cause and immediate origins of an event, while his successor Xenophon ( c. 431 – 355 BCE) introduced autobiographical elements and character studies in his Anabasis . The Romans adopted
11932-587: The college when Baroness Blackstone left suddenly to become Tony Blair 's first higher education minister. On 27 January 2010 he was elected to the position of President of Wolfson College, Cambridge , serving the statutory seven-year term of office until retiring from the post on 30 September 2017. During this period he focused on building up the college as a centre of contemporary culture, with art exhibitions by Richard Deacon and Anthony Green, and talks by Martin Amis and Neil MacGregor , among many others. In 2014 he
12089-482: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes
12246-511: The country threw off superstition, autocracy and confusion to create a balanced constitution and a forward-looking culture combined with the freedom of belief and expression. This model of human progress has been called the Whig interpretation of history . In his main work Histoire de France , French historian Jules Michelet coined the term Renaissance (meaning "Re-birth" in French language ), as
12403-408: The country. Another important French historian of the period was Hippolyte Taine . He was the chief theoretical influence of French naturalism , a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. One of the major progenitors of the history of culture and art ,
12560-420: The cultural context of the times. An important part of the contribution of many modern historians is the verification or dismissal of earlier historical accounts through reviewing newly discovered sources and recent scholarship or through parallel disciplines like archaeology . Understanding the past appears to be a universal human need, and the telling of history has emerged independently in civilizations around
12717-544: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer
12874-474: The death penalty. In the 1980s, Evans was a conspicuous figure in the Historikerstreit , a controversy surrounding the historical work and theories of German historians Ernst Nolte , Joachim Fest , Andreas Hillgruber , Michael Stürmer , Hagen Schulze , Imanuel Geiss and Klaus Hildebrand , all of whom Evans considered German apologists attempting to white-wash the German past. Evans' views on
13031-469: The defence in the case. Starting in the autumn of 1997, Evans, along with Thomas Skelton-Robinson and Nik Wachsmann , two of his PhD students, closely examined Irving's work. They found instances in which he had used forged documents, disregarded contrary evidence, selectively quoted historical documents out of context, and mis-cited historical records, thus misrepresenting historical evidence in order to support his prejudices. Evans subsequently proved to be
13188-447: The defence. Evans' involvement in the trial was included in the 2016 film Denial , in which he was played by British actor John Sessions . Between 2003 and 2008, Evans published a three-volume history of the Third Reich. Drawing on years of experience as a leading scholar of German history , Evans produced what some historians call the most extensive and comprehensive history of the rise and fall of Hitler's regime ever produced by
13345-484: The development of constitutional government. William Stubbs 's Constitutional History of England (3 vols., 1874–78) was an important influence on this developing field. The work traced the development of the English constitution from the Teutonic invasions of Britain until 1485, and marked a distinct step in the advance of English historical learning. Karl Marx introduced the concept of historical materialism into
13502-545: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during
13659-523: The early 1970s, Evans travelled to Germany to research his dissertation, a study of the feminist movement in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. It was later published as The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 in 1976. Evans followed his study of German feminism by another book, The Feminists (1977), which traced the history of the feminist movement in North America, Australasia and Europe from 1840 to 1920. A theme of both books
13816-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique
13973-511: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of
14130-622: The experiences of people and the workings of the institutions of power" in Germany, criticized the third volume's discussion of occupied Poland and the USSR as oversimplified and sometimes inaccurate. Walter Reich , former Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. , states about the third-volume of the trilogy, The Third Reich at War , "If any work of accurate history has
14287-702: The fairness of a 1936 German election in which the Nazi Party (the only legal political party in Germany at the time) received 98.8% of the vote (in a rigged election ). A subject that drew Irving and Evans deep into debate was a memo by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery Hans Lammers to the Reich Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger in which Lammers wrote that Hitler ordered him to put
14444-467: The focus of historical research in France during the 20th century by stressing long-term social history, rather than political or diplomatic themes. The school emphasized the use of quantification and the paying of special attention to geography. An eminent member of this school, Georges Duby , described his approach to history as one that relegated the sensational to the sidelines and was reluctant to give
14601-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows
14758-499: The goal of an ancient work was often to create political or military paradigms. It was only after the emergence of Christianity that philosophies of history grew in prominence due to the destiny of man from the Christian account. Epics such as Homer 's works were used by historians and considered history even by Thucydides . In the 19th-century historical studies became professionalized at universities and research centers along with
14915-706: The gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer
15072-409: The grass-roots of politics and the everyday life and experience of ordinary people". "History is about people, and their relationships. It's about the perennial question of 'how much free will do people have in building their own lives, and making a future", Evans has said. He says he supported the creation of a "new school of people's history", which was a result of a trend that "has taken place across
15229-870: The historian uses the "objective historian" standards, they are a "conscientious historian". It was Irving's failure as an "objective historian" not his right-wing views that caused him to lose his libel case, as a "conscientious historian" would not have "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" to support his political views. The process of historical analysis involves investigation and analysis of competing ideas, facts, and purported facts to create coherent narratives that explain "what happened" and "why or how it happened". Modern historical analysis usually draws upon other social sciences, including economics , sociology , politics , psychology , anthropology , philosophy , and linguistics . While ancient writers do not normally share modern historical practices, their work remains valuable for its insights within
15386-605: The historians Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn , Evans instead emphasized the "self-mobilization from below" of key sociopolitical groups, as well as the modernity of National Socialism. In the 1980s, Evans organized ten international workshops on modern German social history at the University of East Anglia that did a good deal to refine these ideas, to pioneer research in this new historical field and, in six collections of papers, present it to an Anglophone readership. Among Evans' major research works are Death in Hamburg (1987),
15543-537: The illegitimate methods employed by David Irving , as before the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial, there was no legal precedent for what constituted an objective historian. Justice Gray leant heavily on the research of one of the expert witnesses, Richard J. Evans , who compared illegitimate distortion of the historical record practiced by Holocaust deniers with established historical methodologies. By summarizing Gray's judgment, in an article published in
15700-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as
15857-541: The late 20th century: historical editing. Edmund Morgan reports on its emergence in the United States: It required, to begin with, large sums of money. But money has proved easier to recruit than talent. Historians who undertake these large editorial projects must leave the main channel of academic life. They do not teach; they do not write their own books; they do not enjoy long vacations for rumination, reflection, and research on whatever topic interests them at
16014-535: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during
16171-603: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as
16328-461: The life stories of four German criminals in the late 19th century, namely a homeless woman, a forger, a prostitute and a conman. In Rituals of Retribution , Evans traced the history of capital punishment in Germany , and using the ideas of Michel Foucault , Philippe Ariès and Norbert Elias as his guide argued that opposition to the death penalty was strongest when liberalism was in the ascendancy, and support for capital punishment coincided when
16485-480: The medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen , fall somewhere between these two extremes. Him with that falchion in his hand behold, Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . Richard J. Evans Sir Richard John Evans FRSL FRHistS FBA FLSW (born September 29, 1947)
16642-529: The mid-19th century and exploring the politics of the death penalty until its abolition by East Germany in 1987. In Death in Hamburg , Evans studied the cholera outbreak in Hamburg in 1892, which he concluded was caused by a failure in the medical system to safeguard against such an event. Another study in German social history was Tales from the German Underworld (1998), where Evans traced
16799-441: The moment. Instead they must live in unremitting daily pursuit of an individual whose company, whatever his genius, may ultimately begin to pall. Anyone who has edited historical manuscripts knows that it requires as much physical and intellectual labor to prepare a text for publication as it does to write a book of one's own. Indeed, the new editorial projects are far too large for one man. The editor-in-chief, having decided to forego
16956-535: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than
17113-466: The needed function he has abandoned. Homer This is an accepted version of this page Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c. 8th century BCE ) was an Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer
17270-671: The official chronicle of the State of Lu covering the period from 722 to 481 BCE, is among the earliest surviving Chinese historical texts arranged on annalistic principles. Sima Qian (around 100 BCE) was the first in China to lay the groundwork for professional historical writing. His written work was the Shiji ( Records of the Grand Historian ), a monumental lifelong achievement in literature. Its scope extends as far back as
17427-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage
17584-464: The past that constructed history as history of a nation. A new discipline, sociology , emerged in the late 19th century and analyzed and compared these perspectives on a larger scale. The modern academic study of history and methods of historiography were pioneered in 19th-century German universities. Leopold von Ranke was a pivotal influence in this regard, and is considered as the founder of modern source-based history . Specifically, he implemented
17741-433: The past, the sensibility which studies the past 'for the sake of the past', which delights in the concrete and the complex, which 'goes out to meet the past', which searches for 'unlikenesses between past and present'." Butterfield's formulation received much attention, and the kind of historical writing he argued against in generalised terms is no longer academically respectable. The French Annales School radically changed
17898-527: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace
18055-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than
18212-457: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after
18369-486: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At
18526-600: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish
18683-583: The right was in the ascendancy. Thus, in Evans' view, capital punishment in Germany was never a mere matter of law being disinterestedly applied but was rather a form of state power being exercised. In addition, Evans examined such subjects as belief in witchcraft, torture, the last words of the executed, the psychology of mobs, varying forms of execution from the Thirty Years War to the 1980s, profiles of executioners, cruelty, and changing views towards
18840-568: The rise of Rome from city-state to empire . His speculation about what would have happened if Alexander the Great had marched against Rome represents the first known instance of alternate history . In Chinese historiography , the Classic of History is one of the Five Classics of Chinese classic texts and one of the earliest narratives of China. The Spring and Autumn Annals ,
18997-404: The rise of constitutional government , personal freedoms , and scientific progress . The term has been also applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (the history of science , for example) to criticize any teleological (or goal-directed), hero-based, and transhistorical narrative. Butterfield's antidote to Whig history was "...to evoke a certain sensibility towards
19154-470: The roles on other groups. Gender biases as well. Moral or worldview evaluations by historians are also seen partly inevitable, causing complications for historians and their historical writings. One way to deal with this is for historians to state their biases explicitly for their readers. In the modern era, newspapers (which have a bias of their own) impacts historical accounts made by historians. Misplaced Pages also contributes to difficulties for historians. During
19311-473: The roots of Germany's political development in the first half of the 20th century in a " failed bourgeois revolution " in 1848. Following a contemporary trend that opposed the previous "great man" theory of history, Evans was a member of a group of young British historians who in the 1970s sought to examine German history during the German Empire "from below". These scholars highlighted "the importance of
19468-412: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of
19625-687: The same time, philosopher David Hume was having a similar impact on history in Great Britain . In 1754, he published the History of England , a six-volume work that extended from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. Hume adopted a similar scope to Voltaire in his history; as well as the history of Kings, Parliaments, and armies, he examined the history of culture, including literature and science, as well. William Robertson ,
19782-448: The seminar teaching method in his classroom and focused on archival research and analysis of historical documents. Beginning with his first book in 1824, the History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514 , Ranke used an unusually wide variety of sources for a historian of the age, including "memoirs, diaries, personal and formal missives, government documents, diplomatic dispatches and first-hand accounts of eye-witnesses". Over
19939-591: The shaping of historical events. The apex of Enlightenment history was reached with Edward Gibbon 's, monumental six-volume work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , published on 17 February 1776. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of primary sources , at the time its methodology became a model for later historians. This has led to Gibbon being called the first "modern historian". The book sold impressively, earning its author
20096-516: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,
20253-423: The standard Daubert tests unless a court was given "a great deal of assistance from historians". Schneider proposes that by testing a historian against the criteria of the "objective historian" then, even if a historian holds specific political views (and she gives an example of a well-qualified historian's testimony that was disregarded by a United States court because he was a member of a feminist group), providing
20410-498: The study of world-historical development. In his conception, the economic conditions and dominant modes of production determined the structure of society at that point. Previous historians had focused on the cyclical events of the rise and decline of rulers and nations. Process of nationalization of history , as part of national revivals in the 19th century, resulted with separation of "one's own" history from common universal history by such way of perceiving, understanding and treating
20567-399: The third volume for The Times , best-selling historian Antony Beevor writes: "With this third volume, Richard Evans has accomplished a masterpiece of historical scholarship ... [He] has produced the best and most up-to-date synthesis of the huge work carried out on the subject over the past decades." However, Timothy Snyder , while praising Evans's "vertical method [of] weav[ing] together
20724-533: The three-volume The French Revolution: A History in 1837. The resulting work had a passion new to historical writing. Thomas Macaulay produced his most famous work of history, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second , in 1848. His writings are famous for their ringing prose and for their confident, sometimes dogmatic, emphasis on a progressive model of British history, according to which
20881-484: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of
21038-579: The tiniest fraction's works survive and it is out of this small pool that ancient historians and ancient historiography are analyzed today. Modern historians of the ancient world have to deal with diverse types of evidence, which are debated more today than in the 19th century due to innovations in the field. Ancient historians were very different from modern historians in terms of goals, documentation, sources, and methods. For instance, chronological systems were not widely used, their sources were often absorbed (traceability of such sources usually disappeared), and
21195-545: The trilogy as "magisterial". The third volume, The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (published by Penguin in 2008), looks at major developments from 1939 to 1945, including the key battles of the Second World War, a vivid, moving and detailed account of the mass murder enacted during the Holocaust and Hitler's dramatic downfall in Berlin in 1945. In an October 2008 review of
21352-484: The war. Evans also denounced, as an attempt to justify the Holocaust , Nolte's claim that Chaim Weizmann 's letter of 3 September 1939 to Neville Chamberlain , promising that the Jewish Agency would support the war effort constituted " Jewish declaration of war " on Germany that justified the pre-emptive internment of Jews in concentration camps. In his 1989 book, In Hitler's Shadow , Evans also criticised
21509-544: The way for the rise of the Third Reich , but Evans takes pains to point out that many other possibilities could have happened. For Evans, the values of the 19th-century German middle class contained the already germinating seeds of National Socialism . Evans studied under Fischer in Hamburg in 1970 and 1971 but came to disagree with the " Bielefeld School " of historians, who argued for the Sonderweg thesis that saw
21666-525: The whole problem is. Every time there is a euphemism, Mr. Irving ... or a camouflage piece of statement or language about Madagascar, you want to treat it as the literal truth, because it serves your purpose of trying to exculpate Hitler. That is part of ... the way you manipulate and distort the documents." In a 2001 interview, Evans described to the Canadian columnist Robert Fulford his impression of Irving after being cross-examined by him as: "He [Irving]
21823-405: The whole way through the archives do we find even one item that we do not have to interpret or read between the lines of, but we do have in the same chain of evidence documents which ... quite clearly specifically show Hitler intervening in the other sense?" In response, Evans stated, "No, I do not accept that at all. It is because you want to interpret euphemisms as being literal, and that is what
21980-440: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he
22137-639: The work of several different writers: it was started during the reign of Alfred the Great in the late ninth century, but one copy was still being updated in 1154. Muslim historical writings first began to develop in the seventh century, with the reconstruction of the Prophet Muhammad 's life in the centuries following his death. With numerous conflicting narratives regarding Muhammad and his companions from various sources, scholars had to verify which sources were more reliable. To evaluate these sources, they developed various methodologies, such as
22294-403: The world. What constitutes history is a philosophical question (see philosophy of history ). The earliest chronologies date back to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt , though no historical writers in these early civilizations were known by name. Systematic historical thought emerged in ancient Greece , a development that became an important influence on the writing of history elsewhere around
22451-480: Was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question." His findings and his account of the trial were published in his 2001 book Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial , which was published as Telling Lies About Hitler in the United States in 2002. The High Court rejected Irving's libel suit and awarded costs to
22608-621: Was an important influence on this developing field. He took a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations and demonstrated that they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. William H. McNeill wrote The Rise of the West (1965) to improve upon Toynbee by showing how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. A new advanced specialty opened in
22765-532: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in
22922-451: Was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the 2012 Birthday Honours . Richard Evans was born at Woodford , Essex , to Ieuan Trefor Evans and Evelyn (Jones) Evans, who both came from Wales . He was educated at Forest School , Jesus College, Oxford (MA), and St Antony's College, Oxford (DPhil). In a 2004 interview, he stated that frequent visits to Wales during his childhood inspired both an interest in history and
23079-566: Was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge (in 2010 the word "Modern" was removed from the title by royal decree). The post is a royal appointment in the gift of the Prime Minister of the day and dates back to 1724. Previous holders of the title have included John Dalberg-Acton (1895), Herbert Butterfield (1963), Geoffrey Elton (1983), Patrick Collinson (1988) and Quentin Skinner (1998). Evans
23236-456: Was appointed Provost of Gresham College , in the City of London , an institution founded in 1597 to provide free lectures to Londoners. There are now over 2,000 lectures on the college's website and the 130 lectures a year are all live-streamed. Evans has appeared regularly on a number of TV documentaries related to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. He recently appeared on a major TV documentary on
23393-509: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from
23550-507: Was coined by Herbert Butterfield in his short book The Whig Interpretation of History in 1931, (a reference to the British Whigs , advocates of the power of Parliament ) to refer to the approach to historiography that presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment , culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy . In general, Whig historians emphasized
23707-486: Was easy and that learning how to do research was the main mission. A critical experience for graduate students is having a mentor who will provide psychological, social, intellectual and professional support, while directing scholarship and providing an introduction to the profession. Professional historians typically work in colleges and universities, archival centers, government agencies, museums, and as freelance writers and consultants. The job market for new PhDs in history
23864-477: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,
24021-544: Was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances
24178-606: Was the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt Burckhardt's best-known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). According to John Lukacs , he was the first master of cultural history, which seeks to describe the spirit and the forms of expression of a particular age, a particular people, or a particular place. By the mid-19th century, scholars were beginning to analyse the history of institutional change, particularly
24335-523: Was the weakness of German middle-class culture and its susceptibility to the appeal of nationalism. Evans argued that both liberalism and feminism failed in Germany for those reasons despite flourishing elsewhere in the Western world . Evans' main interest is social history , and he is much influenced by the Annales school . He largely agrees with Fischer that 19th-century German social development paved
24492-453: Was then reduced to two, whom the board interviewed, resulting in the board's recommendation of Evans to the Prime Minister and in the issue of a Royal Warrant for his appointment. As well as serving as Regius Professor, Evans served as chairman of the history faculty from October 2008 to 30 September 2010. Evans is used to combining administration with research. At Birkbeck College, London, where he worked before Cambridge, he acted as Master of
24649-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent
#413586