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The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Leo Treitler*
Affiliation:
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Extract

The discourse of history can appear as a medium of proud self-portraiture, as the ritual of a culture in narcissistic self-contemplation, glorying in its uniqueness and superiority and in its descent from revered ancestors. This thought catches history as a kind of myth and opens history to anthropological, as well as to historiographical, description.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 Royal Musical Association

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References

This essay is dedicated to Lewis Lockwood in honour of his sixtieth birthday It has benefited from the work of Hayden White, especially The Content of the Form (Baltimore, 1986)Google Scholar

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39 Dizzy Gillespie with Al Frazer, To Be or Not to Bop (New York, 1979), 111Google Scholar

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