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The Landscape of History

Summary/Abstract: The article of John Lewis Gaddis “The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past” is an essayistic endeavor to conceptualize the task of history through several figural concepts. The author uses figural concepts – such as metaphorical concepts for example – since he claims that history does not analyze them thoroughly, but represents a dynamic work with the past. The first figure is the painting by David Caspar Friedrich where a man looks at the past as a landscape and not in details. That is the power of generalization and abstraction. It is also exemplified by the abstract cubist model in the art of Pablo Picasso. The founder of the Annales School, Marc Bloch emphasizes the limited scope of the examined events in a historical work. In an essay by Mark Twain it is outlined how maturing is in fact humbling oneself. The role of history is to humble the historian and show him how insignificant he is in the broad picture. Finally, there is an analysis of Thucydides’ "History of the Peloponnesian War", which reaches some important philosophical generalizations. The Athenians were ruthless to the conquered populations, but sometimes they cancelled their brutal measures as unnecessary. From that, Gaddis infers that history’s task is to outline potentialities, but every potentiality can also be amended or not fulfilled at all.

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