We are delighted to present free-to-read articles from across the five article sections which are specially commissioned for Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. These essays will help you get to grips with classic texts in context, using primary sources, understanding key thinkers and concepts, and deepening your understanding of historiography.
Covering Tacitus’s life, contemporary audience, text, and reception, this comprehensive introduction to the Annals enables the reader to understand the work in its historical, literary and cultural context.
First considering the best definition of ‘folklore’ and of folklore sources, this article looks at how folklore has been studied by historians throughout the ages and discusses how best to work with folklore sources as a modern historian.
This article considers the concept of “time” over time from Aristotle onwards. Looking at how different philosophers and schools of thought have perceived time, temporality, and the relationship between past and future, it covers thinkers from Nietzsche and Hegel to the Whig-historians and the Romantics.
Sima Qian (or Ssu-ma Ch’ien) virtually created the field of historiography in his culture, being the first person to write a comprehensive history of China at the turn of the first century BCE. This article considers Sima Qian’s influences, impact, interpretations, and legacy.
This article reviews the idea of the Anthropocene against previous trends in the understanding of the planet as historically shaped by humans; discusses the contemporary position of the Anthropocene in historical debates; and finally looks to the future of the Anthropocene in History.
