Historical Imagination examines the threshold between what historians consider to be proper, imagination-free history and the malpractice of excessive imagination, asking where the boundary between the two sits and the limits of permitted imagination for the historian. We use "imagination" to refer to a mental skill that encompasses two different tasks: the reconstruction of previously experienced parts of the world and the creation of new objects and experiences with no direct connection to the actual world. In history, imagination means using the mind's eye to picture both the actual and inactual at the same time. All historical works employ at least some creative imagination, but an excess is considered "too much". Under what circumstances are historians permitted to cross this boundary into creative imagination and how far can they go? Supporting theory with relatable examples, Staley shows how historical works are a complex combination of mimetic and creative imagination and offers a heuristic for assessing this ratio in any work of history. Setting out complex theoretical concepts in an accessible and understandable manner and encouraging the reader to consider both the nature and limits of historical imagination, this is an ideal volume for students and scholars of the philosophy of history.

The origins, nature, function and effects of imagination have engrossed writers, theologians, philosophers and practitioners of the arts across the ages; its influence on painting and music continues to be debated. It has been simultaneously feared as a dangerous, uncontrollable force and revered as the supreme visionary power. Cocking's Imagination is an exploration of the history of imagination from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book opens with a treatment of imagination in the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Developments in the Middle Ages are traced, with particular attention to the parallel tradition in Islamic thought of the period and the book pursues the concept through the theories of Dante and the Neo-platonists to the High Renaissance. The manuscript was left unfinished on Professor Cocking's death in 1986 and has been edited by Penelope Murray, who adds an introductory essay. The book will be of particular value as a background to the explosion of interest in the imagination in the Romantic period.

"A thorough and breathtaking review of modern historiography, anthropology, and literary criticism as they relate to the American frontier."—Robert V. Hine, author of Second Sight

Leo Treitler is a central figure in American musicology, both for his writings on medieval and Renaissance music and for his influential work on historical analysis. In this elegant book he develops a powerful statement of what music analysis and criticism in relation to historical understanding can be. His aim is an understanding of the music of the past not only in its own historical context but also as we apprehend it now, and as we assimilate it to our current interests and concerns. He elucidates his views through unique new interpretations of major works from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries.

From the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the imagination came to be recognized in South Indian culture as the defining feature of human beings. Shulman elucidates the distinctiveness of South Indian theories of the imagination and shows how they differ radically from Western notions of reality and models of the mind.

As the foremost white West Indian writer of this century and author of the widely acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1890-1979) has attracted much critical attention, most often from the perspective of gender analysis. Veronica Gregg extends our critical appreciation of Rhys by analyzing the complex relationship between Rhys's identity and the structures of her fiction, and she reveals the ways in which this relationship is connected to the history of British colonization of the West Indies. Gregg focuses on Rhys as a writer--a Creole woman analyzing the question of identity through literary investigations of race, gender, and colonialism. Arguing that history itself can be a site where different narratives collide and compete, she explores Rhys's rewriting of the historical discourses of the West Indies and of European canonical texts, such as Rhys's treatment of Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea. Gregg's analysis also reveals the precision with which Rhys crafted her work and her preoccupation with writing as performance.

Distinguished historians and literary scholars explore the overlap, interplay, and interaction between history and fiction.

In History and Imagination, elementary school social studies teachers will learn how to help their students break down the walls of their schools, more personally engage with history, and define democratic citizenship. By collaborating together in meaningful investigations into the past and reenacting history, students will become experts who interpret their findings, teach their peers, and relate their experiences to those of older students, neighbors, parents, and grandparents. The byproduct of this collaborative, intergenerational learning is that schools become community learning centers, just like museums and libraries, where families can go together in order to find out more about the topics that interest them. There is an incredible value in the shared and lived experiences of reenacting the past, of meeting people from different places and times: an authority and reality that textbooks cannot rival. By engaging elementary social studies students in living history, whether in the classroom, after school, or in partnership with local historical institutions, teachers are guaranteed to impress upon the students a special, desired understanding of place and time.

Offering a unique perspective on the very notions and practices of storytelling, history, memory, and language, Clio’s Laws collects ten essays (some new and some previously published in Spanish) by a revered voice in global history. Taking its title from the Greek muse of history, this opus considers issues related to the historian’s craft, including nationalism and identity, and draws on Tenorio-Trillo’s own lifetime of experiences as a historian with deep roots in both Mexico and the United States. By turns deeply ironic, provocative, and experimental, and covering topics both lowbrow and highbrow, the essays form a dialogue with Clio about idiosyncratic yet profound matters. Tenorio-Trillo presents his own version of an ars historica (what history is, why we write it, and how we abuse it) alongside a very personal essay on the relationship between poetry and history. Other selections include an exploration of the effects of a historian’s autobiography, a critique of history’s celebratory obsession, and a guide to reading history in an era of internet searches and too many books. A self-described exile, Tenorio-Trillo has produced a singular tour of the historical imagination and its universal traits.