issue110

cuilei_1985UID: 2121020

Issue110  第24篇 让砖头来得更猛烈些吧！
------摘要------
作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户     共用时间：39分41秒     551 words
从2005年7月31日0时35分到2005年7月31日1时39分
------题目------
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.
------正文------
As everyone knows, historians always add some subjective understanding and imagination to the historical events so as to retain a integrality. Maybe historian seems to be a storyteller, however, I fundamentally oppose this define because historian has some essential disparities with the storyteller.

Admittedly, historians can not behave such objective as archivists and journalists the tasks of whom are to search datum and write objectively and concretely. They do not consider whether these datum are sensible and reasonable. However, the historians must study these datum sagaciously, sometimes with their rational imaginations. There are different versions of history written by different historians. However, the fundamental facts they based on are coherent, with some disparities in the judgment or some reasoning. Therefore, we have to concede that historians are not purely objective as archivists and journalists.

Even if the history has some subjective factors in it, the historian can still not be regarded as storytellers. Above all, they have different purposes. Storytellers just make up some intricate plots to attract people' attention and let people obsessed in their fiction they have constructed. In contrast, the historians aim at reflecting history as true as possible. What they based on is the datum from the archivists and journalists. Historians apply their deep master and understanding of the history to adhere the episode of history into a complete, reasonable history process in which they do not imagine and write randomly but depend on the objective, recorded events. Therefore, the purpose of historians is not telling a story but to depict a history as accurate as possible.

The study of history does not include only history events but also some historical arts, heritage and some technological achievements which have more emphasis on the composition and configuration by historians. However, this composition and configuration can not be made up without referring to some important records or datum. Also, it will needs some other kinds of knowledge for historians such as the development course of arts, the sources of heritage and the tendency and situation of the society at that times. Historians just make use of their existed knowledge to explain and deduct the unknown world. Therefore, we can say the historians have made some creative enterprise but not a pure fiction.

The historians and the storytellers have another difference in the methods of writing. Storytellers mostly write by their own and do not have to communicate with other authors but historians are opposite. There are some circumstances when there is no sufficient data which can be consulted by historians. This situation may have to need a rigid analysis to present the facts and then make a justifiable reasoning which is greatly distinguished by the make-up. By this means, it may cause a distinction between different historians when they write and construct history in the same times. Then the communication and crisis from each other can better assess the historian because they can give more objective judgment by excluding some ideas which have been rejected by most other historians. So even if the history has not been believed to be a totally realistic event, historian studies more facts and absorbs more experience and ideas from other sources which can contribute to probable truth.

In conclusion, there is no similarity between storytellers and historians although historians construct history by interpreting evidence. Because their different purposes and different methods of writing.