Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
of these thematic parallels depends on their not being noticed. To recognize
their mythical origins would suggest a dependency upon borrowed prem-
ises that Dinesen probably did not wish to acknowledge, and so “Babette's
Feast” remains a narrative not about God but merely about God-like deeds.
Borrowed plots can take from a myth what the storyteller wants, while leav-
ing all else behind.
In supposing that Condorcet's
Esquisse
also displaces the more tradi-
tional story of providence into something like natural history, I presume
upon the rationale that Hayden White has given for regarding history as a
category of discourse that is structured by narrative forms and thus equally
subject to such interpretation.
27
History, White has argued, only becomes
meaningful when it has the property of “narrativity,” because “a refusal of
narrative indicates an absence or refusal of meaning itself.”
28
Never merely
attempting to model the past in symbol, histories are also, says White,
metaphorical statements which suggest a relation of similitude between
such events and processes and the story types that we conventionally use
to endow the events of our lives with culturally sanctioned meanings.
Viewed in a purely formal way, a historical narrative is not only a
reproduc-
tion
of the events reported in it, but also a
complex of symbols
which gives
us direction for finding an
icon
of the structure of those events in our
literary traditions.
29
Because narrative forms are projected onto other categories of discourse,
no complete distinction between fiction and historical nonfiction is pos-
sible—and just as often, this is true between sacred and secular discourses.
For White, the irresistible impulse to imitate sacred narratives in particular
arises from the “moral meaning” that myths encode, their “motive” force,
as we would say in Kenneth Burke's parlance.
30
f
Rom
P
RoviDence
to
P
RogRess
What does the theory of displacement then tell us about historical narratives
which have been structured by the Christian worldview? If secular histo-
ries such as Condorcet's take their form from the Christian view of history,
what Christian themes are likely to persist? In his classic examination of
the Christian idea of history, the philosopher R. G. Collingwood indicates
that there are four such themes: Christian histories (or in our case displaced
Christian histories) will be providential, universal, apocalyptic, and peri-
odized.
31
Once it is supposed that history is
providential
—that it is governed
