CULTURE STUDIES BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION: THE SYNOD OF WHITBY AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS
CULTURE STUDIES BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION: THE SYNOD OF WHITBY AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The paper will focus on the importance of history for cultural studies following the views of Frederik Brogger that if culture is defined as belief systems then cultural studies must be an interdisciplinary combination of anthropological, historical, linguistic, and literary approaches. Within the historical context various issues should be tackled, such as explanation vs. interpretation, referentiality vs. figurativeness, the particular vs. the representative, and, for the purpose of this presentation, fact vs. fiction. The wide-spread misconception that history deals exclusively with facts while fiction is the domain of literature will be analysed in relation to a 7th century historical event, the Synod of Whitby, which was more or less a random choice since all historical events pose the problem of interpretation. The earliest written record considered a fact will be discussed from the point of unreliability of sources in order to show that they inevitably become fiction in the sense of interpretation. The real religious, economic and political reasons which led to the Synod of Whitby will be also mentioned with the idea of stressing the importance of history for the discipline of cultural studies.

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