Sensitive and imaginative rhetorical analysis of nineteenth‑century historical representation. Bann isolates a "historical poetics" distinctive to the early nineteenth century and its subsequent exposure to an "onslaught of irony . . . precisely because the compelling rhetoric of the earlier period had worn thin, and historical science continued to assert more and more rigid standards of authenticity, the successors of [Sir Walter] Scott were forced to undertake new, and ever more extreme, stylistic subterfuges" (6). Bann uses Foucault's notion of episteme and acknowledges the influence of Hayden White, especially his Metahistory. The collection includes #"Historical Text and Historical Object" and #"A Cycle in Historical Discourse." (Susan Peabody) (Abstract via Allan Megill)