Writing history: a poetic writing

Abstract

History as a discipline has its discursive structure composed in the form of a verbal prose narrative that aims to realistically represent what it intends to explain objectively. Thus, we highlight approximations between historiographic writing and literary writing, in a direction in which the historian's poetic attitude is found in the process of creation and elaboration of his narratives about a past he seeks to give meaning - and ultimately, make it useful – in relation to the present and the context in which it is inserted. This article analyzes the propositions of approximation between historiographical and literary writing formulated by the historian Hayden White, who investigated literary, therefore artistic, elements in historiographic production.