Abstract

Probing a case study of current public debate, I will examine the referential and performative status of the language of historiographical narratives. In detail, I will frame this topic within a dispute that saw historians such as Arnaldo Momigliano and Carlo Ginzburg opposing Hayden White’s linguistic turn of postmodern historiography. To abandon the fictionalist features attributed to this latter tradition, I will present a parallel between historical narratives and novels in the light of the linguistic notion of «opacity». Then, I will show a possible conception of the opacity of historiographical language by displaying different theoretical approaches, such as that of novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, the view of Frank Ankersmit, exponent of the linguistic turn, and the analytical references of philosopher of literature Peter Lamarque