ABSTRACT
The concerns of the postmodern moment dis-cussed thus far are reflected in contemporary re-evaluations of the concept of history, both in historiography and in literature. For example, the critique of representation trans-
lates into a refusal to see the past as constituted by events which we can innocently recapture and re-present through language. We no longer are able to think about absolute and unquestionable 'facts' or 'truths' of history, speaking now of 'histories' instead of History. Our emphasis now on signification, rather than validation, we ask: how have we, or do we, give meaning to events through interpretation? In the realm of historiography (the telling of history in narrative form) we see suggested answers to these questions in concepts such as Hayden White's (1973) concept of 'metahistory', which posits historiography as a poetic construct. That is, the historian works within a 'metahistorical' paradigm which exists on a poetic, or linguistic, level, and which determines what, for that historian, constitutes historical explanations.
