What can artful history teach us about how to write about archives in a way that honours the past yet makes history come alive?

我的论文将包括一个研究和一个创造性的项目。研究部分(30%)将集中于通过研究伯德的信件、书籍、照片和传记来恢复她的作品，并对档案进行方法论驱动的分析，以了解伯德的写作方法。我将以伯德的书信作为探索真相的基础，并影响档案管理、保存和利用的理论。我将考虑苏格兰国家图书馆等机构的力量如何影响对过去的描述，这些机构如何影响什么成为“历史”、“国家认同”和“集体记忆”(真相)，以及这如何影响档案使用者和创建者的情感反应(影响)。我将探讨米歇尔·福柯和爱德华·赛义德的理论，以提出关于真相、表现和档案之间的关系的问题，关于约翰·默里合集。在创作项目中(70%)，我将询问那些遵循怀特的《元历史》(1973)的人，以强调文学和历史之间的重叠：叙事、语言、情节和隐喻(等等)，以概念化我如何将这些原则应用到我的创造性非虚构散文中。怀特反对知识生产的“科学”模式，而是强调在历史叙述的叙述中的多元化解释和文学策略。我自己的写作受到后现代主义历史的启发，比如罗森斯通的《镜子与神殿》(1988)，以及萨克斯和德莫斯的《艺术史》(2020)。这本选集展示了文学策略如何以有趣、情绪化的方式打开历史，以及历史学家如何像小说家一样，需要找到一种承认主观性的形式。写散文给了你以第一人称书写历史的自由，让你的思想和观点与作者的原创文字融为一体。伯德详细的叙述和诗意的散文使她的作品超越了标准，她的信件格式为她的叙述带来了生动的一面，这是旅行作家很少描绘的。我的作品接近于批评/创作的混合体，用主观性打开过去，为伯德的写作带来现代视角。《艺术史》使用了经典的讲故事技巧，旨在将历史视为文学的一个分支。它是“发自内心的历史”，而不是“头脑中的历史”(演示)，因此它激活了感官和想象力。通过探索伯德的散文，我试图学会以一种不仅具有启发性，而且令人感动的方式来写她的作品--为艺术性的历史做出概念性的贡献。伯德早期的旅行写作采取了给她姐姐写信的形式。她写了许多关于异国情调和偏远地区的书籍，从夏威夷群岛和北美到远东和许多其他目的地。她描绘了她访问过的国家的女性、欧洲、基督教和殖民景象，调整了自己的写作，同时她也成为了摄影的先驱，在她的描述中提供了更多的事实和地理细节。伯德的书信为“艺术历史”提供了一个有趣的领域，为这位历史学家提供了探索伯德的修辞手法、她的语言、叙事策略和人物角色的机会。我的项目将与伯德作为作家和历史学家的作品相匹配，这是一种创造性的非虚构艺术，它以一种“巧妙的”分析方式，考虑到声音和观点的变化，散文诗和反思，类似于罗森斯通的叙事和施泰纳的《狼柳》(Wolf Willow，1962)。创造性的项目将包括十篇散文，重点是伯德在落基山脉、日本和远东其他地区的旅行。关键的声音将是她的日语仆人兼翻译伊莎贝拉的声音，以及她的出版商约翰·默里的声音，因为他们对伊莎贝拉的旅程产生了关键影响。我必须和作家约会

My thesis will comprise a Research and a Creative Project. The research element (30%) will focus on recovering Bird's work through the study of her letters, books, photographs and biographies and conducting a methodologically-driven analysis of the archive to understand Bird's writing approach. I will use Bird's letters as the basis of exploring truth and affect theories in the management, preservation and use of archives. I will consider how the power of institutions such as the National Library of Scotland can influence the portrayal of the past and how these can impact on what becomes 'history', 'national identity' and 'collective memory' (truth), and how this can impact on the emotional reactions (affect) of users as well as creators of archives. I will explore the theories of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, in order to raise questions as to the relationship between truth, representation and the archive, with respect to the John Murray Collection.In the creative project (70%) I will interrogate those who have followed White's 'Metahistory' (1973) to highlight the overlaps between literature and history: narrative, language, plot and metaphor (amongst others) to conceptualise how I apply these principles to my creative non-fiction essays. White argued against the 'scientific' model of knowledge production, and emphasised instead, the plurality of interpretations and literary strategies in the narration of historical accounts. My own writing is informed by postmodernist histories such as Rosenstone's, 'The Mirror and the Shrine' (1988), and Sachs' and Demos' 'Artful History' (2020). This anthology demonstrates how literary strategies open up history in interesting, emotional ways, and how, like novelists, historians need to find a form that acknowledges subjectivity. Writing essays gives the freedom to write history in the first person, to mergereflexive thoughts and multiple viewpoints with authors' original words. Bird's detailed narratives and poetic prose lifted her work beyond the norm and her letter format brought a vividness to her accounts, rarely portrayed by travel writers. My work verges on critical/creative hybridity and uses subjectivity to open up the past and bring a modern-day perspective to Bird's writing.Artful History uses the classic techniques of storytelling and aims to see history as a branch of literature. It is 'History from the Heart' as opposed to 'History in the Head' (Demos) and as such it activates the senses and the imagination. By exploring Bird's prose, I seek to learn to write about her work in a way that is not only instructive, but also moving - making a conceptual contribution to artful history.Bird's early travel writing took the form of letters composed to her sister. She wrote a number of books on exotic and remote locations, ranging from the Hawaiian Islands and North America, to the Far East and many other destinations. She portrayed a feminine, European, Christian and colonial vision of countries she visited, adjusting her own writing as she also became a pioneer of photography, offering more factual and geographical details in her accounts. Bird's letters offer an intriguing terrain for 'artful history' affording the historian as critic opportunities to explore Bird's rhetorical devices, her language, narrative stratagems and personas. My project will match Bird's work as both writer and historian, the arts of creative non-fiction meeting history in an 'artful' analysis that takes into account shifting voices and viewpoints, prose poetry and reflection, in a similar way to Rosenstone's narratives and Stegner's 'Wolf Willow' (1962).The creative project will consist of ten essays, which will focus on Bird's travels in the Rocky Mountains, Japan and other areas in the Far East. The key voices will be those of Isabella, her Japanese servant-interpreter, Itõ Tsurukichi and John Murray, her publisher, as they had a pivotal influence on Isabella's journeys. I have to date writt