|
|
Article: Byzantium: The Decline and Fall.
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- May 3, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
In the days before social history and statistical "cliometrics," the word "history" implied thick, multivolume chronological narratives of events, usually political and military in nature and almost invariably the consequences of the decisions and actions of kings, emperors, and other leading individuals. This type of history, of course, has not disappeared, any more than novels with traditional plot structures disappeared following Robbe-Grillet. Like the traditional novel, the older sort of history, with its linear sequence of events and focus on individual actors, may often be more approachable for the general reader. John Julius Norwich's three-volume history of the ...