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Description of  Engaging with the Past, c.250-c.650 (Variorum Collected Studies)

Between c.250 and c.650, the way the past was seen, recorded and interpreted for a contemporary audience changed fundamentally. Only since the 1970s have the key elements of this historiographical revolution become clear, with the recasting of the period, across both east and west, as late antiquity. Historiography, however, has struggled to find its place in this new scholarly world. No longer is decline and fall the natural explanatory model for cultural and literary developments, but continuity and transformation. In addition, the emergence of late antiquity coincided with a methodological challenge arising from the linguistic turn which impacted on history writing in all eras. Read more