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issue110 ,历史类,naiba369等大人进
这是第二篇,与第一篇相比除了时间短了点感觉没啥进步
110."When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."
In this argument, the author provides two claims. The first one is that exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit, and the second one is that all historians are storytellers. I agree that exploring history is a creative enterprise, but I think it is an objective science basically. And I disagree with author’s second claim because the historians are largely different from the storytellers for their obligation and working.
The aim of the research of historians is to depict the scene which happened many years before and they must respect the historical fact. They can not create the history, but revert it with the help of a great amount of relics and files. Both the book of the storytellers and the historians can provide us something interested about the history, but the first one is combined with the fact and the fiction. The storytellers would not be responsible for their works because they are produced with imagination from the beginning. Historians, on the contrast, must provide people effective evidences to support their arguments, otherwise their outcome of the study will always be considered as a hypothesis. Thus we can conclude that the history is an objective science that emphasizes the demonstration.
Recently, a famous Chinese writer named Jin Yong, who has written several salable historical fictions, is dismissed from the history professor in a university. The university that engaged him for his reputation ultimately finds that he is not fit to a historian. Obviously, the working manner of the historian is different from the one of the novelist or the storyteller. Admittedly, the storytellers sometimes also study the history, but in order to make the reader attracted, they always write or tell their stories with imagination and exaggeration. On the other hand, the historians have to collect a lot of data and documents, analyze and synthesis these materials and draw some conclusions. This process is constructed on the facts that actually happened before. As long as some historian could provide any evidence to prove that the former theories are inaccurate, the history book will be rewritten.
It is undoubtedly that there exist some relations between the storyteller and the historian. The storytellers’ works would be helpful for the historian to do their research. Marco Polo, who wrote his travel notes in fat east and his book conduce to the study of the history of China, should be considered as a storyteller not a historian. In the same way, people also can use the myths to study the ancient history and culture, but we can not regard Homer as a historian.
To sum up, history is more complex and comprehensive than just a "story-telling", correspondingly, historian is more than a story-teller, instead they have much to concern about and need to know much: a great historian are not only a experienced writer but also a disinterested scientist and a perspicacious sociologist. |
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