Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 4:03 pm Post subject: Contat and Cats
•Is Contat a historian? Why or why not?
•Is the account History? Why or why not?
I would not consider Contat to be an historian. I would consider him to be a historical story teller. His main objective seems to be to write something provocative and interesting rather than something that is historically rigid and reliable. His telling of the great cat massacre is too artistic and unreliable to be considered good history. He focuses on the adventurous tale of the two apprentices in the print shop. His story being told from the viewpoint of Jerome tarnishes the historical aspect as it calls for conjecture and creation rather than factual retelling. He appears to be developing a character in Jerome rather than providing a setting for a piece of history. Contat's main flaw, which makes his cat massacre account unreliable is his heavy overuse of metaphors and symbolism. He is not telling this story merely to inform the reader of the massacre of these cats, but rather to make an opinioned statement on the French class system of the time. The fact that the story is told 20 years after the fact also makes his specific details about the reactions of the master and his wife unreliable. It is simply not a piece of work that could be considered accurate and reliable enough to be classified as history.
I would agree with Noah when he says that Contat is not a historian, but a historical story teller. I wouldn't reason that because he didn't tell "good" history.... I would say that since his telling of the story seemed to be more artistic than factual, he is not a historian.
Contat's account of the events was almost History. For his account to be History (with the big H), he would have to have more analysis, and he didn't have enough. I also think that time periods are important, since Contat was only writing 20 years after the incident, and Darnton's seems to be written way more than 20 years after it happened. Darton was able to have a lot more (time) space than Contat was to analyze the story. Darton analyzed the story a lot more, turning his writing into History.
Joined: 31 Mar 2014 Posts: 9 Location: United States
Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:45 pm Post subject:
I don’t believe that Contat was a historian at all. Perhaps he could be classified as a historical storyteller as Noah suggested. However, I see him simply as a storyteller whom which stories we can deduce history from. I don’t think that this story was made for Historical purposes it was simply made to be an amusing story. This makes Contat simply a speaker of maker of stories. Just because we use his story now to deduce historical facts from does not make the author himself a Historian.
The account itself can be considered and analyzed as a historical. The story can tell us a lot about the times period and fashions at the time which makes it historically significant but not a historical document. It does not record history in a way that that was made for future generations to understand. So although it does give us glimpses of what life might be like at the time of the author and does help to progress the discipline of history the document itself as well as the author did not intend it for historical purposes there fore making it a story not a historical account.
I do not think that Contat is a historian. I think that his account of the cat massacre is historically relevant and is something for historians to consider, it is not a historical text in itself. This is because it has such a story like quality to it. It is similar to Herodotus's writings in that it is poetic and may have some of the writers personal preference in it. Contat's telling of the cat massacre is also not historical because there is no analysis. In the discipline of history the events are analyzed to figure out why they happened. In a story the events are sometimes analyzed but they do not have to be.
I think that this account if the question is about (Contats account) is definitely history (not History) this is because it is a telling of past human events. I think that although it is told in story form and may not be exactly factually accurate that does not mean it is not history. To my knowledge a lot of historical events have been recorded in ways where the historian is not always sure f the facts are completely accurate, but by compiling many different somewhat accurate facts the historian can gain a better sense of what is accurate and what is not.
Like those before me, I don't think that Contat is a historian. However, I think this is less of my decision and more his own; that is to say, I don't not consider him to be a historian because he lacks experience or because this is the only account (that we are aware of) that he has written that resembles history. Rather, I don't think of him as a historian because he refers to himself repeatedly more as a printer, as a part of that printing community, and that makes me think that any historical knowledge that we glean from this account is thus a byproduct of that main identity.
However, this account has many aspects of History, and I would deem it as such. It relies on multiple societal and cultural references, which can be considered the temporal and specifics/detail references necessary for History. Furthermore, the reader of the account is forced to adapt to the viewpoint of the author; in this case, due to specific interpretations being built through the use of particular semantics in conjunction with selected information. By semantics, I mean more than simply word choice, but that word's use within a specific setting/aspect of the event, as well as its ability to signal historical elements within the account. And by selected information, I mean that the author limits what the reader can imagine by excluding elements of their presented account, and thus there is less flexibility in what can be visualized in an event.* To go off of this, all facts used only have meaning because of their temporal and societal context and because the degree of their importance is explained in the context of the story (for instance, when Contat says that "it is enough to speak badly of the masters to be esteemed by the whole assembly of typographers" after noting that the workers are "in league against the masters" - so you not only understand that they hate their bosses, but the extent to which that matters). Finally, history does not trap the people it describes to their circumstances - there's some breathing room that denotes that the account is not the only important thing in these people's lives.
*I still think this means that all accounts can be equally true...If all accounts are based off of a baseline overview/big picture, all interpretations of these facts are equally useful and truthful, even if they only explore one angle. If the rebuttal to this is that the account that explores 100% of the event is most truthful, wouldn't a report that includes 70% of the events - but is more commonly understood - be most truthful? Doesn't truth necessitate understanding? It can only be considered truth if we connect to it somehow, I think.[/i]
For some reason, I feel very hesitant to authoritatively dismiss Contat as a historian. While I think this kind of approach might be a little too abstract and dependent on a sort of pernicious relativism -- i.e., a kind of postmodern approach that would render something like Contat's work as relevant as, say, Herodotus -- I do think there's value in at least considering the ways in which Contat's account can be read as capital-H History. In reading and considering these questions, I thought a lot about the extent to which a methodology must maintain a sense of rigidity in order to still have any use. I think an important aspect of Contat's narrative to take into account is: in what ways does it effectively communicate its content to an audience that isn't steeped in the language/customs of the people being depicted? Darton gives an interesting description of Contat's position as a writer: "He selected details, ordered events, and framed the story in such a way as to bring out what was meaningful for him. But he derived notions of meaning from his culture just as naturally as he drew in air from the atmosphere around him"(100). So, does a historian -- or, maybe, a good historian -- need to distance himself from the the conditions in which he or she lives, or at least recognize some objectivity outside of the customs of his or her day-to-day life?
My intuition is to simply say, "No, Contat is not a historian." But I feel like if I'm to extend my simplistic understanding of what a historian does, I become confused about whether or not I can deny him that title with any certainty. I'm not sure if I've made myself clear: I know that the writer Donald Barthelme defended his fiction by claiming that "good" fiction -- no matter what aesthetic tradition it falls under -- unavoidably contemplates the real world and it's relation to an individual's interior understanding of that world. I guess, in trying to define history, I've had a hard time making the distinction between great fiction and great history -- e.g., if we are to better understand the history of Russia, should we go to Tolstoy or somebody who wrote History? What will give us a better account of what things were really like?
Contat was a person who played a role in history, but was not a historian in himself. This is because Contat had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing the history that he recorded, thus denying him the opportunity to be a historian. I think of doing history as studying that which you did not experience yourself. If you did experience that which you recorded, it is not history, but rather a story - and if phrased just right, it could even be called science since it is the observation and conclusion of hard facts obtained through experience. And so, no, I don't believe Contat was a historian, though I do believe his account of the event is (now and only now) history.
Is Contat a historian? Why or why not?
Is the account History? Why or why not?
I will not say Contat is a historian. Historian could be understand as the people who write history or the people who analyze History, but Contat is neither of them. His writing gives too much of story feeling, I believe no matter how dramatic the event could be, there is always a serious way to write history. A story will not have the same accuracy as history. That also reminds me of my elementary school study. I didn't have an official history class until 7th grade, but before that I have learnt a lot of historical events, but I learnt them under the subject Chinese(I mean if I was here, it would be English). So there is a great difference between a historical story and history. I think the account is history, but it is not History. It is not enough to analyze and learn from it. However, it does record the past events, so it could be count as history. It recorded a lot of useful things for us to learn.
Contat is not a historian, at least based on what information we have from this one source. He merely happened to record a story that highlighted the values of his time and place. His account is a primary source and provides some insight into the past, but it is not History. (It is a part of history, but so are all written records and lots of other things.) It was not, I assume, written with the intent of preserving the past or present for future studies.
I don't know how to eloquently elaborate any further, my answer is just "no."
Yep. Contat's not a historian. I agree with what Eve said; it's an account of history, not History. Really, it's a memoir. Well, actually, not quite, because his account isn't strictly from his perspective, it's "somewhat fictionalized"...
Huh, I actually took Memoirs earlier this year, and I didn't anticipate that it'd be useful in a class like this. Okay, this is going to be a weird post. At least it'll be a little different, I guess.
Contat's account reminds me of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It's technically fiction, but it's largely autobiographical - the main character is also called Tim O'Brien, and many of the events and characters in it are based on his own experience in the war. It's not quite fiction, not quite memoir, not quite "real" and not quite "unreal". He gets pretty meta about halfway through in How to Tell a True War Story - like the rest of the book, it's told from the perspective of O'Brien the character, not O'Brien the author... O'Brien the author purposefully makes this distinction incredibly vague.
A passage:
Quote:
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, "Is it true?" and if the answer matters, you've got your answer.
For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it true?
The answer matters.
You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything's possible even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, "The fuck you do that for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man," and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead.
That's a true story that never happened.
"Truth" doesn't lie in "happening", argues O'Brien the character (and, perhaps, O'Brien the author by extension). If the spirit of the story is true, then the story as a whole may as well be true, regardless of its factual content. Of course, this is completely qualitative, has no methodology, and is completely outside of discipline altogether - but do we need a discipline at all to find truth?
Contat is doing exactly the same thing as O'Brien the author. Through the spirit of his story, he tries to define the truth, and he accomplishes this by using his own experiences to create a pseudo-autobiographical pseudo-fictional report. It's not history, but something about truth is certainly there, even without discipline or methodology! Jeremy, spot on about great fiction and great history - I think one can effectively use either in order to achieve understanding. In fact, the whole analysis by Robert Darnton, the bulk of the reading, exactly tries to forge an understanding based on this "fiction". Darnton can't prove that Contat's account actually happened, but he can examine the spirit of it.
"Happening" truth... how important is "happening" truth, really...
Okay, to be honest, I wrote all these after only reading Contat's account and only skimming Darnton's analysis. I'm going to actually finish that part now, and I'll edit this post later if it turns out that this whole thing was completely invalid.
Last edited by Mark Gartsbeyn on Tue Apr 15, 2014 8:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
Unfortunately this class is filled with intelligent people who have made a lot of the point I wanted to make, but I will just restate some of them anyway. I agree with Tino that Contat cannot be a historian of events he experienced himself. If he is telling stories of his own life he is just, as many people pointed out, a storyteller. Historians must analyze the events they are studying which he does not do at all. I am not as bothered as Noah was by the possible inaccuracy of Contat's account, but I am bothered by the fact that he uses only himself as a source and he does not study the story at all, he simply tells it. There is nothing wrong with this, it just means he isn't a historian. However I would say I agree with Jeremy, the more I try to answer this question the less I know what historian means.
I would say the article following the account was History, but I wouldn't say the story itself was. The article used context, analysis and put this event into patterns and conventions of the time. It did all the work to make the story into a real understandable Historic event.
I think he is practicing a more personal kind of History. In the way that little t truth is more personal truth he is doing little h history, in the sense that he is working to examine the past (not understand the present or future) but it's more about him understanding his past, than on a larger scale. He is definitely writing history but I'm not sure if he is a Historian. Like I said before I think maybe he is a personal H/historian but not really in the larger sense of the world like Darnton is. This idea isn't fully formed though, its just a thought I had. I'm curious to know what other people think, so any help would be appreciated!!
What a strange reading. Not what I expected. I agree that Contat is not a (an?) historian but I disagree with both Noah R and Emma R in that I do not believe he is a historical story teller. His story has almost no historical merits. He is telling a story about a moment in time that he experienced from his own point of view. Sure, it can be considered history because it is something that happened within a human being's life, but because of the story-telling style of the account I don't think it is fair to call it history.
Based only on this account I have to say that Contat is not a historian, but I am curious to see what else he has written and if his stories ever wrap into a larger story or message, maybe linking to major events in history or just having to do with anything important in general. It was certainly interesting.
Nah. Contat was not a historian. He may have told a story with historical relevance, but that does not necessarily make him a historian. The story itself is told more like a novel than a historical writing piece. In my opinion, there's too much emotion in the writing for it to be considered a legitimate source of information. Emma phrased it the best: "...his telling of the story seemed to be more artistic than factual." It seemed like it was written specifically for the purpose of telling a story than actually being a source of solid information, which all historical texts should be capable of doing, in my opinion. All of this isn't to say that he's a bad writer or that his writing is not historical, it's just that he is simply a story-teller with historical elements, not a historian. Kwiatkowski out
I apologize ahead of time for being pedantic and for just talking too much... to Tino and Julia, regarding Contat and his discussing what he experienced: what about Thucydides? He fought in the very war he wrote about; is he not a historian?
Basically, I'm not sure if it's fair to discredit someone as "not a historian" just because they write about something that they were a part of. I do agree, Julia, that Contat is not a historian because he does not employ an analysis to his experience, but I think the fact that it's his experience may be irrelevant. Tino, I think the science you portray in this context - "observation and conclusion of hard facts obtained through experience" is really just History in disguise. It's exactly what Thucydides did (though of course he also extensively used the account of others - but why would we discount Thuc's account just because it's his , and not anyone elses?).
Unrelated: Noah B, I think it is "an" historian? Teacher Rachel is very adamant about this, at least.
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