Spiel Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft spiel Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft Jg.. 30 (2011), Heft 1 Peter Lang Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Wien Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISSN 2199-8078 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2012 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. www.peterlang.de spiel Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft Jg. 30 (2011), Heft 1 Auf dem Weg zu einer Narratologie der „Geschichtsschreibung“ Towards a Historiographic Narratology Herausgegeben von / edited by Julia Nitz (Halle) & Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Altoona) Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft Herausgeber dieses Heftes / Editors of this issue: Julia Nitz & Sandra Harbert Petrulionis Inhalt / Contents SPIEL 30 (2011), H. 1 Julia Nitz, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Halle/Altoona) Towards a Historiographic Narratology: Résumé 1 Penelope Frangakis (Athens) The Role of the Historian as an Author/Narrator: The Case of Herodotus’s The Histories 7 Stephan Jaeger (Winnipeg) Poietic Worlds and Experientiality in Historiographic Narrative 29 Hanna Meretoja (Turku) An Inquiry into Historical Experience and Its Narration: The Case of Günter Grass 51 Alun Munslow (Dodsleigh) The Historian as Author 73 Julia Nitz (Halle) In Fact No Fiction: Historiographic Paratext 89 Yair Seltenreich (Upper Galilee) Personal Diaries as Historical Narratives: Yossef Nachmani and the Galilee, 1935-1941 113 Beverley Southgate (London) “All their Feet on the Ground”?: Tidy (Hi)stories in Question 131 RUBRIC Norbert Groeben (Heidelberg) Empirisierung (in) der Literaturwissenschaft: wissenschaftsinterne und -externe Dynamiken 151 Thomas Wilke (Halle) Mashup-Kultur und Musikvideos. Aktuelle Entwicklungen audiovisueller Auflösung und Verdichtung in Mashup-Videos 159 SPIEL 30 (2011) H. 1, 7–28 10.3726/80121_7 Penelope Frangakis (Athens, GR) The Role of the Historian as an Author/Narrator: The Case of Herodotus’s The Histories Dieser Artikel widmet sich dem Historiker in der Rolle des Autors bzw. Erzählers von Geschichte. Die Funktion des Historikers beschränkt sich nicht allein auf das Festhalten historischer Fakten zur Information des Lesers. Im Gegenteil, häufig fungiert der Geschichtsschreiber als narrativer Vermittler der Vergangenheit, der darauf abzielt, eine lebendige Darstellung zu kreieren, die den Leser dazu anregt, didaktische, ethische und philosophische Perspektiven einzunehmen bzw. zu evaluieren. Dieser Beitrag betrachtet die narrative Struktur und Organisation von Herodots monumentalem Geschichtswerk The Histories. Eine Untersuchung des narrativen Habitus Herodots als Autor und Erzähler erlaubt Einblick in für Geschichtsschreibung spezifische Erzählkategorien. Herodot führt uns zu den Wurzeln der Historiografie der westlichen Welt mit ihren Traditionen und Besonderheiten. Herodotus, born in Halicarnassus in the fifth century BCE, was one of the most important historians of his time. His work, The Histories, can be regarded as one of the early examples in the tradition of narrative history, which serves well the purpose of illustrating the complexity of the role of the historian in undertaking the exigent tasks of observing, researching, collecting, recording, evaluating, and presenting historical data. As do modern historians, Herodotus had to engage in a selection process of what to include or exclude from the set of data and ideas gathered, and he had to make decisions about how to adapt, structure and display such historical information in narrative form. When analysing the role of Herodotus as an author/narrator, we see that he fulfills a scientific and artistic role, which, among others, has to deal with issues of narrated and narrative time, cohesion, sources, and credibility. Unlike many ancient authors such as Diodorus Siculus, who without variation reproduced historical sources (Pitcher 2009, 89, 216), the historiographic narrative produced by Herodotus was a literary work of art, and, by extension was a work that its author intended to be a pleasure to read. Herodotus was one of the earliest authors who set himself the goal of pleasing his readers, and conse- quently accomplished creating a much more sophisticated style than that of his Ionian predecessors (Brock 2003, 12–13). Using as guidelines some of Homer’s narrative tech- niques, such as headlines, conclusions, ring-composition, repetition of prolepses and ana- lepses, and narrative integration of descriptions (cf. De Jong 2002, 263), Herodotus established a close connection between history and poetry, attempting to turn historical prose writing into a fine art. Herodotus’s emphasis on the connection between poetry and ancient historiographical texts is also shared by Quintilian, who considers “ancient histo- riography ‘as close to poetry’ and ‘in a sense a kind of prose poem, which is told to narrate, not to win a case’” (in De Jong 2004, 9). Herodotus is an excellent example of a historian who tries to achieve a fine balance between presenting facts in the most credible 8 Penelope Frangakis way possible while making the information presented effectively educative and enter- taining. He is the type of author/narrator who attempts to make his narrative stimulating and exciting to the audience, something that is more commonly a goal of historical fiction writers rather than historians. He is a prototype of an author/narrator who shaped his historiographic narrative based on an intertwining of scientific and literary methods. In the preamble of The Histories, Herodotus announces that the purpose of his work is to preserve events and achievements of the past as produced by both Greeks and non- Greeks, and to show, among other matters, the various causes of the hostilities between these groups. The wars between the Greeks and the Persians (499–479 BCE), in parti- cular, become a pivotal subject for Herodotus, and he brings in numerous sub-stories of a historical, geographical, and ethnographic nature to his main narrative thread. The Histories is composed of nine books, divisions that were created not by Herodotus but by later Hellenistic editors. Herodotus’s long work presents the known ancient world, including Greece and its people and culture, the Persians and the places they encountered during the course of their imperial expansion, the succession of Persian kings and their conquests, and the wars between the Greeks and the Persians. More particularly, Book 1 deals primarily with the stories of Croesus and Cyrus (557–530 BCE), including background on Croesus’s lineage, Lydian and Persian ethnography, and the growth of Median power. Book 2 concentrates on Cambyses’s accession and on Egypt, while Book 3 discusses Cambyses’s reign (530–522 BCE); Darius’s reign (521– 486 BCE), empire and campaigns; and provides an overview of the Arabs and Indians, Samos, and the Lacedaemonians’ war on Samos. Book 4 mainly deals with Scythia and Darius’s expedition there, Scythian ethnography, Libyan ethnography, and history. Books 5 and 6 present Darius’s European campaign as well as the Ionian revolt and its aftermath; while Books 7, 8, and 9 focus on Xerxes and his invasion of Greece (486–479 BCE), the three-year war between the Greeks and Persians, and the victory achieved by the Greeks in Greece and in Ionia (481–479 BCE). Herodotus’s structural decisions impact the interpretation of his narration. His structure of The Histories allows the audience to make connections between the stories narrated and to think about the emerging analogies he draws between them. Further, it enables them to comprehend the sequence of events and to understand similarities and differences between the peoples of the then known world. Narrative and Time When composing his historiographic narrative, one of the major tasks Herodotus had to deal with was temporal organisation. The relationship between narrative time and narrated events is a relevant issue not only in Herodotus’s but in all historians’ narratives. Time is essential to history, both in relation to what historians purport to represent about the past and in how they go about representing it (cf. Berkhofer 1997, 106). Herodotus subordinated “historical time,” otherwise known as “fabula” (the story, the order in which events actually happened), to the “narrative time,” otherwise known as the “plot” of a text (the order in which events appear sequentially in the narrative). The Role of the Historian 9 Herodotus opted for a complex temporal arrangement: presenting his narrative only roughly chronologically, inserting causal links and detours throughout. He played with temporal relations, feeding one chronological sequence into another, engaging his audience as players in a temporal puzzle. Although Herodotus risked confusing the au- dience with this method, his choice ultimately proves effective: it intrigues