Based on the inductive analysis of the previous chapters of the book, the conclusion provides closing remarks on the nature and meaning of the classic and the canon in history. I argue that the ability of some history classics to transcend time stems from their literariness, as it supports the text’s historicity, which include features shared with the classic in literature such as endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. But I introduced other specificities of the historical operation such as the surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity, and a certain appropriation of literariness without damaging the pastness of the past. I emphasize two conclusions. First, I hope to have contributed in some measure to demystifying the idea that ‘classic’ and ‘canon’ are two notions that imply normativity, rigidity, traditionalism, uncritical inertia, or cultural supremacism. Second, I hope that this research will contribute to consolidating the field of ‘historical criticism’, or ‘critical analysis of historical texts’, complementary to but distinct from the theory of history and the history of historiography, which has begun to flourish in historiography in recent decades.

When we think in terms of the durability of historical texts, some works instantly come to mind: Herodotus’, Thucydides’, and Polybius’ war narratives, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Jules Michelet’s History of France, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, Fernand Braudel’s Mediterranean, and Edward Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, among many others. Historians instantly perceive them as durable texts, part of a canon of history and historiography. I examine in this chapter the conditions that might be considered necessary for historical writing to achieve durability, justify why some historical texts have the potential for durability, propose what conditions of creation and reception enabled this longevity, and discuss what practical lessons we obtain from this inquiry. I begin making some distinctions among the three related concepts of durability, the classic, and the canon. I then try to establish the specific conditions of durability of historical texts, focusing on the concepts of Chronotope (Mikhail Bakhtin), the effect of contemporaneity (Gadamer and Koselleck), temporalization (Heidegger, Ricoeur), timelessness (Hartog), and the connections between the concepts of durability and the practical past (Oakeshott, Hayden White).

Arguing its relevance in historiography, and its connection with the related concept of the classic, this chapter examines the place of the canon in history: its formation, key turning points, convenience, usefulness, and the desirability of its existence itself. In the first part of the chapter (‘Constructions’), I examine the five main turning points in the formation of the canon in history: Greco-Roman, Collingwood-Croce, narrative history of the 1970s, gender and postcolonial, and global canon. The second part of the chapter (‘Canonizing’) examines three case studies of the canon in history: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macaulay’s History of England and White’s Metahistory. The third part (‘Resistances’) explores the rejection of the canon among historians, describes some of its manifestations and reflects on its motivations. The fourth part (‘Paradoxes’) details the main characteristics of the historical canon, points out the differences among other canons such as the literary and artistic, and explores the peculiar combination of art and science that every historical operation entails. The conclusive section (‘Inescapability’) argues for the great paradox of the canon: the impossibility of conducting cultural and intellectual exchanges without it.

This chapter starts by arguing that traditionally the writing of history has a strong connection to the construction of identities, be they national, class, ethnic, gender or spatial identities. The theory of history has also re-inforced that link until a range of diverse thinkers came to question this. I am discussing in particular Hayden White, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Chris Lorenz, Chantal Mouffe, Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. The collective impact of these authors has been to produce a greater self-reflexivity about the relationship between history and identity formation in many historians. The book, however, is not about a whiggish story of progress towards self-reflexivity, but it highlights that work which, in the author’s view, has been successful in being self-reflective about the historians’ part in the construction of identities.

This chapter begins by summarising the development of the history of ideas out of which conceptual history emerged. It discusses in detail the founding figure of conceptual history, Reinhart Koselleck, and compares his approach to that of the influential Cambridge school, in particular Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, and their ‘contextualism’. The bulk of the chapter is then dedicated to a discussion of a range of examples of how conceptual histories have helped to deconstruct a rainge of collective identities, including class, religious, racial and gender identities. In all of these areas we have seen an intense interest in linking the history of conceps with the study of emotions, social practices and the problematisation of the national container for historical studies. In particular the move to a transnational history of concepts has contributed in a major way to de-essentialising collective national identities but also transnational, i.e. European ones. Furthermore, conceptual history has been emphasising the importance of studying the translation of concepts into different languages and cultural spheres.

Chapter 1 introduces the notion of “living historiography,” a corollary to “living institutional history,” to describe the dynamic interaction between the writing of official state historiography in the Song dynasty and ongoing political developments. An examination of the theoretical operation of state historiography against the composition of the surviving sources reveals that conflicts between Confucian literati and the monarchy, and between factions within the bureaucracy, often thwarted and shaped the routine (and supposedly neutral) processing of official documents into official history. At the same time, a subgenre of exemplary historiography intended for imperial reading and reference selected preferred “precedents” (gushi) from his material as guides for future political action. Over time, these compilations grew into an exemplary history of the dynasty. This chapter, and the ensuing Chapter 8, generate an analytical framework that explains how this process led to the present, received narrative of Song history. Notions of metanarrative and allegorical interpretation, akin to ideas from postmodern deconstruction, help to examine the rhetorical and literary manipulation of these sources.