narrative turn definition
narrative turn means that the task for historians more generally becomes less one of exactitude than one of ‘framing’ when engaging in accounts of the past. One kind of framing that draws on a literary device to circumvent the problems of the linear trajectory of history, is the selection of a particular ‘moment’ of consciousness through which to tell the story; be that the story of a revolution, a lifetime, or a global transformation. This exegetic moment which frames the event in some way brackets out the past that leads up to the ‘moment’ as a kind of nondescript cotton wool as Virginia Woolf – (famous for the literary trope ‘moments of being’) puts it. It is a telescopic device, a close up, an evocative technique to frame a story. It provides a perfect point of entry for historians into what otherwise might feel like a risky endeavour given the vast and contested nature of ‘history’. In this vein Pincus’ book entitled 1688 describes the events leading up to and emanating from what he calls the ‘first modern revolution’, which triggered ‘an epochal break in the construction of the state’ (2009:9), Shapiro’s book(1988) entitled 1599, recounts a revolutionary year in the life of William Shakespeare’s career, from which he ‘emerged’ as a great writer. Historian and ecologist Charles Mann’s book (2011) entitled 1493 tells the story of ‘the Columbian exchange’ recounting the moment in which the ecological collision of Europe and the Americas, he writes, resulted in a transformation to the first globalised economy.