Peter Charles Hoffer - Clio Among the Muses: Essays on History and the Humanities

Thank you for buying this ebook, published by NYU Press.

Sign up for our e-newsletters to receive information about forthcoming books, special discounts, and more!

Sign Up!

A publisher of original scholarship since its founding in 1916, New York University Press Produces more than 100 new books each year, with a backlist of 3,000 titles in print. Working across the humanities and social sciences, NYU Press has award-winning lists in sociology, law, cultural and American studies, religion, American history, anthropology, politics, criminology, media and communication, literary studies, and psychology.

CLIO AMONG THE MUSES

Clio among the Muses

Essays on History and the Humanities

Peter Charles Hoffer

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2014 Peter Charles Hoffer
All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoffer, Peter Charles, 1944
Clio among the muses: essays on history and the humanities / Peter Charles Hoffer.
pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-3283-5 (hardback)
1. History Methodology. 2. Historiography. 3. History Philosophy.
4. Humanities. I. Title.
D16.H686 2013
907.2 dc23 2013027458

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Also available as an ebook

In beginning our history proper, it might perhaps be wise to forget all that we have said before and start fresh, as a lot of new things have come up.

ROBERT BENCHLEY, 1944

The humorist, essayist, and pseudo-documentary movie maker Robert Benchley had a rare gift for parody. One of his targets was the academic know-it-all who learns everything from books. For example, in order to write about snake-charming, one has to know a little about its history, and where should one go to find out about history but to a book. Maybe in that pile of books in the corner is one on snake-charming. Nobody could point the finger of scorn at me if I went over to those books for the avowed purpose of research work.

Benchley put his finger on exactly what historians do when they write about other historians (a subject inelegantly called historiography). They go over to that pile of books, sort and read, compile genealogies of ideas and methods, and make judgments, and another book goes on top of the pile. Historians (if not, alas, their readers) find the study of the discipline of history endlessly fascinating. For at the center of the study of the past is a compelling paradox: We demand to know about the past but can never be sure we have gotten our account right. We would love to go back in time (all historians are secret re-enactors), but we cannot go back, and even if we could, how could we see all the events from all the perspectives that the past offers? History is Odysseus Sirens calling us to a place that we cannot reach, yet we persist in listening. The Sirens call is so enchantingwriting history is an act of such artistrywho can blame historians for spending a lifetime of research and writing at their command?

In a 1998 essay for the American Historical Associations Perspectives, the historian Peter N. Stearns listed the benefits of studying history: History helps us understand change, provides clues to our own identity, and hones our moral sense. But history is not a standalone discipline. Indeed, it stands on the shoulders of its companions in the humanities and social sciences. In the following pages brief span, I assay historys complicated partnership with its coordinate disciplines of religion, philosophy, social science, literature, biography, policy studies, and law. These are Clios modern sister disciplines, comparable to the eight other muses who accompanied Clio in the ancient world. That companionship, sometimes immensely rewarding, sometimes testy and rancorous, adds to the authority and humanity of chronicle, but history is not just the accumulation of other disciplines knowledge. More than the sum of these collaborations, the study of history is something unique, ennobling, and necessary. One can live without religion, philosophy, and the rest. One cannot exist without history. But I do not want to give away here what should be earned by reading the following pages.

I wish to acknowledge those kind people who have assisted me in this Herculean task (which I liken to wrestling Antaeus): Clive Priddle and Michael McGandy for their help in my attempts to grapple with the meaning and method of history; Peter Onuf and Claire Potter, whose readings of an earlier essay taught me how to get a hold on key themes; and Richard Bernstein, William Cronon, Paul Finkelman, Michael Gagnon, John T. Juricek, Stanley Katz, Allan Kulikoff, Maureen Nutting, Thomas Whigham, and Michael Winship, whose combined intellectual weight added to my own effort enabled me to pin down the subject. Michael Zuckermans refereeing of the manuscript was overly kind, his pages of admonitions and emendations invariably fair. My wife and scholarly partner, N. E. H. Hull, and my older son, Williamjames Hull Hoffer, have read bits and pieces of this project over a course of years and cheered me on. At New York University Press, editor Debbie Gershenowitz urged me to submit the manuscript; and her successor editor, Clara Platter, guided it through the Press Board approval process and then offered a remarkably kind pre-edit. No wrestling match with an opponent as experienced and wily as history will ever result in a complete victory, but to all of the kind people who shared this contest with me, my heartfelt thank you.

It is said that Clio cannot be taken by storm, but requires much patient and skillful Wooing. Moreover, Clio likes a certain degree of self-effacement in her suitors.

CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN,
This Country as Mr. Chesterton Sees It,
New York Times Book Review, June 8, 1919

Clio, paramount among the nine ancient Greek muses, was gifted by her mother with memory and shared lyric skills with her eight sisters. She inspired those who assayed to sing, tell, and write stories of the past. Ancient audiences held the followers of Clio in high regard, for they captured the imagination of the listener and reader. For Hellenes gathered around the fire pit to hear Homer sing about Troy, or Hellenized Romans who delighted in reading their copy of Plutarchs Parallel Lives, or the monks in the English abbeys who squinted in the candlelight as they re-read older chronicles of the lives of Saxon saints and kings, or the thousands of nineteenth-century middle-class families that gathered in gaslit parlors to devour the tales of heroism in Francis Parkmans volumes, history enchanted and instructed, just as Clio wished. The Greeks defeated the Trojans; Caesar failed where Alexander the Great succeeded; Alfred the Great unified Anglo-Saxon England; and the British chased the French and their Indian allies from North America for reasons that

The university-trained historians of the late nineteenth century echoed this creed as they lobbied for required history courses in the schools alongside the sciences.