historical narrative
Story of events
A historical narrative is an account of past events structured as a story, with characters, settings, and a sequence of connected happenings.
Unlike bare chronicles or timelines, historical narratives impose meaning through selection and arrangement: The museum's historical narrative begins with the city's founding.
The term sometimes carries skepticism—suggesting that history is shaped by whoever tells it: That's one historical narrative, but there are others.
- historiographyStudy of history-writing
- primary sourcesFirsthand historical evidence
- causationProduction of effects
- turning pointDecisive moment of change
- collective memoryCommunity's shared historical recall
public memory · war stories · chronology · periodization · epoch · timeline · saga · heritage · narrative voice · grand narrative · storytelling · counter-narrative · revisionism · synthesis · biography · context · memoir · secondary sources
- biographiesbiography, biographies, autobiography, autobiographies, memoir
- humanitiesphilosophy, literature, philosophy class, novels, humanities
- historieschronicle, annals, historical record, historical account, historiography
- Ancient ChinaShang dynasty, Han dynasty, Confucius, Warring States period, oracle bones
- ancient historiansHerodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Tacitus
- historianshistorians, chronicler, chroniclers, annalist, annalists
historical narrativefiction
Imagined narrative work
myth · legend · fantasy · fabrication · fairy tale
historical narrativeprophecy
Foretelling of future events
forecast · speculative fiction · prediction · science fiction · futurology
historical narrativenovel
New and unusual
romance · creative writing · literary fiction · story · entertainment