The autonomy of history : truth and method from Erasmus to Gibbon

In these learned essays, Joseph M. Levine shows how the idea and method of modern history began to develop during the Renaissance, when a clear distinction between history and fiction was first proposed and defended both in practice and in theory. The dependence of history on rhetoric and theology dissolved as history gradually won its autonomy. He offers a number of case histories to show that by the end of the eighteenth century, recourse to "matter of fact" became pervasive, and the new claims for history were met by skepticism in a debate that still echoes today. // Table of Contents

Part. I. History and Fiction in the English Renaissance.

1. Thomas More and the Idea of History.

2. Philology and History: Erasmus and the Johannine Comma.

3. Thomas Elyot, Stephen Hawes, and the Education of Eloquence


Part. II. Ancients and Moderns.

4. The Battle of the Books and the Shield of Achilles.

5. Strife in the Republic of Letters.

6. Giambattista Vico and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns


Part. III. The Autonomy of History: Edward Gibbon and the Johannine Comma.

7. Truth and Method in Gibbon's Historiography.

8. Travis versus Gibbon.

9. Porson versus Travis.