I am currently reading the Han Histories [http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html#sec1], and I must admit... the length of this website intimidates me.
Professor Goodman wants us to think about what constitutes historical writing, and if we would classify this piece within this genre. So far I find that there is no doubt in my mind that would consider this work as anything but historical writing. It is compliled by Fan Ye (I looked this up online) who used a number of earlier histories to create his 'official history'. This to me legitmizes Fan Ye's work because the history is created by people who lived and experienced the exact context they are writing about. While this fact makes it fascinating because we are getting almost a first hand account, so far the reading itself is not thoroughly engaging.
Okay, back to the reading...
So far I am so glad that I read the textbook first because it is making this reading much easier to understand.
Will finish this when I'm done reading!
..... *Later*
I found a lot of this reading to be more of an elaboration of what was said in the text book. It's interesting to raise the question of if this history or not, because then we have to actually step back and define what history is. I believe that this is a historical piece of work and should be taken into account as history because it describes the past. It may have biases in it because it is written from one point of few, but I think that can be said with almost any historical document. (Almost) no matter what, there is a bit of bias in either how someone writes a piece of work, or how it is taken by the reader. As the reader, I find this to be historical.
Professor Goodman wants us to think about what constitutes historical writing, and if we would classify this piece within this genre. So far I find that there is no doubt in my mind that would consider this work as anything but historical writing. It is compliled by Fan Ye (I looked this up online) who used a number of earlier histories to create his 'official history'. This to me legitmizes Fan Ye's work because the history is created by people who lived and experienced the exact context they are writing about. While this fact makes it fascinating because we are getting almost a first hand account, so far the reading itself is not thoroughly engaging.
Okay, back to the reading...
So far I am so glad that I read the textbook first because it is making this reading much easier to understand.
Will finish this when I'm done reading!
..... *Later*
I found a lot of this reading to be more of an elaboration of what was said in the text book. It's interesting to raise the question of if this history or not, because then we have to actually step back and define what history is. I believe that this is a historical piece of work and should be taken into account as history because it describes the past. It may have biases in it because it is written from one point of few, but I think that can be said with almost any historical document. (Almost) no matter what, there is a bit of bias in either how someone writes a piece of work, or how it is taken by the reader. As the reader, I find this to be historical.
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