SOURCE: “The Reception of Hayden White,” in History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 2, May, 1998, pp. 143–61.

In the following essay, Vann provides a quantitative analysis of White's critical reception among professional historians and discusses aspects of White's work that have drawn criticism, notably his terminology and alleged relativism.

The publication in 1973 of Hayden White's Metahistory, Brian Fay has recently written, marked a decisive turn in philosophical thinking about history.¹ White might demur that he has no “philosophy of history,” since he, notoriously, has bracketed considerations of historical knowledge, as he has bracketed treatments of the referentiality of language. More plausibly, he might repeat his argument that there is no essential difference between history and metahistory; thus all practicing historians—and White still practices occasionally—have a philosophy of history whether they know it or not. However this may be, Louis Mink, writing only a few weeks after the publication of...