storiografica

Storiografica is an Italian adjective that designates things related to historiography, the study of the methods and conventions by which history is written. The related noun storiografia refers to both the scholarly discipline and the body of historical writings and methods that historians have developed. A storiografica approach examines how historians have produced knowledge about the past, including questions of sources, interpretation, narrative construction, and periodization.

In practice, storiografica analysis investigates the evolution of historical explanations over time, the influence of political, cultural, and institutional contexts on historical writing, and the debates among different schools or generations of historians. It contrasts with purely narrative or documentary descriptions by foregrounding meta-historical questions: what counts as evidence, how evidence is interpreted, and why certain events are emphasized or neglected.

In Italian scholarship, the term is used to describe a method or perspective, as in "un approccio storiografico" to denote an analysis that critically engages with how histories have been made. It is also common to speak of "storia storiografica" to indicate studies that map the historiography of a given topic, period, or region.

Critically, storiografica work seeks reflexivity about bias and context, while acknowledging that interpretations change with new sources and methods. It plays a central role in disciplines such as history, archaeology, and literary studies, where understanding how histories are constructed is as important as the events themselves.