Description
Book SynopsisIn Telling It Like It Wasn't, Catherine Gallagher takes the history of counterfactual history seriously, pinning it down as an object of dispassionate study.
Trade Review"Gallagher's new book is a genuinely original contribution to both the theory (and history) of the novel and the theory of history. Philosophers and historians have been debating the cognitive status of historical narratives for over half a century without taking into account the contributions to theory of narrative made by modern literary scholars. Based on a trove of 'counterfactualist' writings that have been little studied until of late, Gallagher's book sheds new light on the differences between history, myth, fiction, hypotheticals, the historical romance, and fantasy writing. Moreover, her book is mercifully free of jargon, her discussion of 'counterfactual' history is subtle and sophisticated, and her analysis of the relation between fiction and hypothesis convincing."--Hayden White "University Professor of the History of Consciousness, Emeritus, University of California " "At a time when fact itself is under siege, why tarry with thought experiments about pasts that didn't happen? Gallagher's answer is a historicist one: although counterfactual narratives have been with us in many forms since antiquity, their full story has remained untold. Fortunately, we no longer have to live in a timeline where Telling It Like It Wasn't has yet to be written. To read this engrossing book is to be haunted not by lives unled but by previously undermapped regions of history, philosophy, theology, legal reasoning, and literature." --Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form
