Metahistory
Metahistory is a field of study that examines how historical narratives are constructed, rather than focusing solely on the events themselves. The term gained prominence through Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), in which he argues that historical writing is not a transparent record of events but a form of storytelling that uses literary and conceptual structures to shape meaning.
White introduces the idea of emplotment, whereby historians plot facts into familiar narrative forms such as
Metahistorical analysis extends beyond politics and biography to consider how disciplinary conventions (for example, positivism, romantic
Critics contend that such an approach risks relativism or denies empirical grounding. Proponents argue that recognizing