SOURCE: A review of Figural Realism, in Clio, Vol. 29, No. 2, Winter, 2000, pp. 229–32.

In the following review, Carrard provides an overview of the topics addressed by White in Figural Realism. Carrard expresses disapproval over White's decision to forego a unifying prefatory essay in the volume.

Figural Realism collects essays written by Hayden White between 1988 and 1997, that is, after the publication of The Content of the Form in 1987. The oxymoronic title points to two of White's most basic theses: namely, that figurative language refers to reality “as faithfully and much more effectively than any putatively literalist idiom or mode of discourse might do” (vii); and, conversely, that seemingly “realistic” modes of representation like historiography include elements of “literariness” (ix), as they are grounded in the “four general types of trope” comprised of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (11). Let us recall that White's “tropes” differ from the “figures” of traditional rhetoric...