1. History as a paradigmatic form of knowledge is the object of Bann's
study: the point of view is the romantic experience - looking at the French
and at the English ones as a whole.
Following a particular method of analysis he observes the different stages
through which History became self-conscious, ceasing to be just a localized
discipline, and Romanticism developed a new code and new symbols - not
merely linguistic ones - through which the experience of history can be
interpreted and revisited.
That, briefly, was the rise of History through Romanticism, from a specific
scientific practice to a substratum to the other cultural activities.
The analysis, based on an essential theoretical framing - Bann addresses
himself to the German culture, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche in particular,
but Hayden White and Roland Barthes too -, is carried on through visual
instances. The specific field of representation can be so opened to an
exegesis which shows how images condense important data about romantic
historical awareness. As the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris: not just
a building, but the representation of the Christian church's power and,
also, the actor of its own spectacle. Or the Strasbourg Cathedral, which
cannot be looked simply as an object outside time because of Goethe's
investment in the past. And so on: look, for instance, at the John Leech's
illustration to the Comic History of England, or at the Borbonic
cult of Henry IV.
2. So Bann's analysis selects a particular thread of the movement of
Romanticism: a relationship of lack which can be understood through various
stages in representation - the desire of History and the processes of
staging and living the past.
The book studies the changes in the technology of representation too,-
as etching, litography and theatre -, of which the important role played
in anticiping photography is stressed. This last is looked from the point
of view of historical representation: photograph as "histoire"
and not "discours" - an important difference, this one.
Through images can be followed the perception of historical past and its
recreation during Romanticism: images do not simply record usages, but
have a generative force.
Bann's expressed aim is not to arrive at definitive conclusions - that's
impossible, because of the nature of analysis -, but to correct the positivity
of certain historical awareness. And his exegesis allows the reader to
become a spectator able to follow it in a direct way.