The individual and history
The individual and history
In the 1960s, many scholars embraced the notion that history should be depicted as a social history which characterised the joys, struggles, and hardships of ordinary people. Social history studies are often based on comprehensive research on church records, national registration material, and other similar sources. Recently, however, historical research has focused on politics and biography. This is evident in Sweden, where a number of popularly written, long-forgotten biographies of some famous individuals such as Gustavus III, Queen Christina, Julius Caesar, and Mary Stuart have been reprinted. There are at least four fundamentally distinct justifications to imagine the modern development of biography as history in refined stages: idiographic justification, heroic justification, existential justification, and popular cultural justification.
Keywords: Sweden, social history, historical research, politics, biography as history, idiographic justification, heroic justification, existential justification, popular cultural justification
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.