Is this man a top-tier historian?
>>385428
yes
>that sweet Georgian accent
>>385440
I still laugh thinking about his rebel yell impression in the Ken Burns doc
>>385440
He's from Mississippi
>tfw when i saw his trilogies first edition for sale at the antique bookstore in town, dust jacket and all, and didn't hesitate to pay $175 for it
I've never even touched them. Read them all years before. I just wanted them on my bookshelf.
>>385428
Despite his books being novels, they are recommended in literally every book I own on the Civil War. Actual, PhD historians like McPhearson use him as a source.
He is probably the fore-most authority on the war in existence.
So yes, he is pretty much a top-tier historian.
Yes. God-tier. The father I never had.
>>385464
me too
Who
>>385428
Who is he??
>>389252
The greatest American Civil War historian ever. Just off the top of my head; I don't think there's ever been another historian who was so indisputably agreed upon to be the chief authority on such a large subject matter.
>>389527
Much apreciatte
Yes, and his Narrative is the best treatment the war has received.
>>385428
>"that war made us an is"
>>385428
The Homer of American civilization. Not joking.
>>391778
You telling me the Civil War wasn't culturally foundational? Get out of here you illiterate.
>>391783
Don't compare a historian to Homer unless you know what Homer was next time you fuckhole.
>>391790
Lol wtf are you talking about.
>>391812
>The Homer of American civilization. Not joking.
You seem to be functionally illiterate.
>>391817
Foote wrote the definitive narrative of a war of foundational importance for American identity.
Homer wrote the definitive narrative of a war of foundational importance for Greek identity (remember, in terms of self-definition, perception is just as important as reality).
The Homer comparison is super common, lol, don't know why you got a stick up your ass.
>>385428
Is that David Duke?
>>391832
>Homer wrote
Yep, sure "he" did.
Homer, the pseudonym for a variety of anonymous authors wrote a court romance which differs significantly from a muscular tale of gay love. Both were highly fictionalised accounts of folk myth, which had been redacted out of any connection with a possible unimportant skirmish to the point at which Homer is only approachable as fiction.
As you claiming Foote is fictitious? Are you claiming that Foote's value is merely identity formation?
>self-definition
Oh fuck off with this liberal individualism. You don't get to play the game two ways.
>>391863
/lit/ tier humanity autists shitting up a Foote thread is really unfortunate.
Go shitpost about Proust somewhere instead. Foote would've approved.
>>391869
I'm sorry you're unable to differentiate history from fiction, and nationalism from historiography. But the ad populum seriously makes you look like a cunt.
>>391879
Not the goober you've been swapping kisses with. Just that Foote deserves better, is all. He was a great man.
This guy's a hack.
>>391863
Dude, I'm talking about Foote as a storyteller. Obviously. Can you seriously not figure that out for yourself? Historians aren't just significant because they advance the scientific investigation of the past, they can also be significant in how that past is remembered in culture.
>Are you claiming that Foote's value is merely identity formation?
How can you be this dense? Clearly I'm not.
Also, you're presenting a theory about Homer which is contentious. Not controversial, very possibly true, but it's disingenuous to present it as if it were flatly true.
>Homer is only approachable as fiction.
Lol, fuck off. Homer is of immense importance culturally and historically. Not as a historian himself (again, no one but you has said that), but as an example of how early Archaic Greeks saw their Bronze Age past. Insofar as both Foote and Homer are storytellers, they play similar roles.
I mean, I guess I could have called Foote the Herodotus of America, but you probably would have found a way to whine about that too, like I should be shocked that an analogy breaks down when you interpret it in the stupidest way possible.
>>391778
>civil war
>nasty little fight into an epochal cultural foundation story?
youre a rube
>>391887
Foote deserves better than to be compared to Homer.
>>391879
Dude, everyone here understands the difference between Homer's work and Foote's work. You're just being stupid.
>>391897
So sexy promiscuous witches appear? Before or after Atlanta burns? Who does Lincoln murder after his lover is killed? How many times around the walls of Richmond?
>I want to compare Foote to fabulists and claim that American nationalism is transhistorical.
Yeah, I would pursue your lying bullshit to the ends of the earth with white hot pokers.
>>391903
Did Homer fuck your girl or something?
god, why are /lit/ fags such autistic shitposters?
>>391911
You're reading what you want to read bro, not what I actually wrote, lol. If you're gonna argue about this, at least make it interesting. It's no fun if you just yell at yourself.
>>391919
/lit/ is pretty much Autism: The Board.
>>391916
No, Homer was a nice fictive read. There's no reason to smear a historian's work by comparing him to the collective author of two romance epics.
>>391919
>>391920
>>391926
Just keep up the nationalist shit-posting and lionisation. Next you'll tell me that Ken Burns presents an insightful and clear vision of the war between the states, one not grounded in reimagining the national for PBS.
>>391929
Every board is autism the board. Just about different things.
>>391929
You're misunderstanding me so severely I'm pretty sure it must be intentional at this point.
I have no idea what you're point about nationalism is. The comparison I'm making is very plain and very common. Get your dick out of your own mouth, no one's impressed that you managed to break down the analogy. You're just intentionally dodging my actual point cause you want to make some stupid point about... something.
>>391929
You are adding nothing to the discussion are are just jerking yourself off. This is why /lit/ is such a boring shit board What kind of emasculated faggot starts calling people nationalist as a fucking insult for liking Shelby Foote, who is without a doubt the most well respected historian when it comes to Civil War history?
>>391954
Claiming that Foote is a "Homer" only exists to support a particular interpretation of the national imaginary. The flaw isn't with Foote: it is with your abuse of him.
>>391953
>The comparison I'm making is very plain and very common.
So you share things in common with a large group of idiot nationalists. This is meant to impress me why?
>>391959
Okay, I'm going to try to back off the hostile tone cause I'm genuinely curious now. What "interpretation of the national imaginary" do you suspect me of making? I honestly have no agenda here, I'm much more boring that you think I am. But I'm curious what it is you are trying to project onto me.
>>391969
Hes some 18 year old communist obviously.
>>391959
You are saying nothing. All you are doing is bitching about nationalism for some reason. You havent proved how Foote isnt a sort of American Homer other than autistically pointing out that they arent 100% exactly the same and calling people nationalist as an insult.
Youre too dumb to articulate whatever butthurt you are feeling right now.
>>391975
Yeah, I don't know why I'm bothering. Maybe he'll come through with something interesting though.
>>391969
Homer is an amusing writer. Bit violent. Sometimes a bit sexy.
Homer's role in Western culture has been dominated by classicism, Homer has been placed upon a pedestal and as up-thread been claimed to represent the formation of an entire classical Greek culture. (Never mind the Egyptian origins of the tragedy, never mind up-hill Attica or the non-urban free Greeks, never mind anyone outside of fucking Athens until the Persians show up).
In the United States classicism is used to argue for the unique nature of The Republic and The Nation, that The Nation is a rebuilt classical nation. The use of architecture, Roman modifications to inherited common laws, modified or reinterpreted pseudo-Roman institutions. The similar love of Greece and Rome in the institutions of higher learning through until the mid 20th century.
Comparing Foote's work as a historian to Homer is, AS WE EXPLICITLY SAW UP THREAD, a nationalist claim about the importance of Foote in narrativising the nation's origin story to itself in order to produce a foundation of a [hoped for] culture.
You're not fucking Athens exporting "demos-cracy" at the tip of 300 triremes. The Homer comparison is used to reproduce Foote's work in the production of a national imaginary in an explicit argument that the United States is as significant as classical Greece.
>>391770
>The Homer of American civilization. Not joking.
>>391783
>You telling me the Civil War wasn't culturally foundational? Get out of here you illiterate.
>>391832
>Foote wrote the definitive narrative of a war of foundational importance for American identity.
>Homer wrote the definitive narrative of a war of foundational importance for Greek identity (remember, in terms of self-definition, perception is just as important as reality).
>>391999
Please go on using otherwise credible historians to produce fables about your past. It is kind of Homeric in its hubris.
>>391990
Agreed on the first two points (though I think you undersell the significance of Homer).
On you're third point, I don't think claiming that Foote was important in "narrativizing the nation's origin story" need be a nationalist claim (ignoring the implication that there's anything wrong with nationalism for argument's sake), it seems almost trivially true. Again, this is not ALL Foote is, but are you seriously denying Foote played that role at all?
Re you're fourth point: 1. The comparison could be used for that, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with it so maybe we can have that discussion. But that was not my point earlier, I was making the much plainer point outlined above, that both Foote and Homer were cultural authorities because of their narratives of a historical war. 2. Are you trying to say imagination or imagery? 3. If there is an argument that the U.S. is as significant as classical Greece hidden in here somewhere, it is anything but explicit. 4. What do you mean by significant? Undoubtedly the U.S. is as significant culturally and geopolitically in its sphere as classical Greece was contemporarily. Much more significant in fact. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
>>392014
>On you're third point, I don't think claiming that Foote was important in "narrativizing the nation's origin story" need be a nationalist claim (ignoring the implication that there's anything wrong with nationalism for argument's sake), it seems almost trivially true. Again, this is not ALL Foote is, but are you seriously denying Foote played that role at all?
Let us assume that the good or bad of nationalism is rightly put aside.
Is it a role played by Foote? If it is, why should we praise his historiography? If his purpose is narrativising a national imaginary rather than producing a history where the national is merely his subject, this is necessarily an improper reading. (Unless we admit some overweaning politics of national geist or class struggle that would let us politically evaluate his political correctness, something I am loathe to do to a historian.)
If it isn't a role played by Foote, but a role played by readers in their reception of Foote, why should we praise Foote for reader reception?
>Imaginary
It is a pretty common term in the study of nationalism as a cultural phenomena. I'm sorry if it appears to be jargon. "The imaginary" is a metaphor taken from psychotherapy. Its use for historians of the national is to distinguish between "actual, real societies" and the imagination of a society which seems to work seamlessly, "an imaginary" society or world, a world or society that lies only in the imagined. Sorry if this was jargon.
>4.
Classical Greece produced a world of squabbling cities, folded in on itself until Persia erupted into it. US culture isn't nearly as closed. I tend to doubt claims of cultural significance as I find them tediously hard to demonstrate. In simpler terms, the US is the metropole par excelance of the contemporary world-system. But culturally it isn't the originator of all Western Culture, the hoped for light, the perfection of war and peace, the grounding of a new classicism.
1/2
>>392014
2/2
There's a big streak of "city on a hill" to claiming that the most recent masterful synthetic readable scholar of the civil war is a Homer.
Were I to compare CW Bean (a name you're almost certainly unfamiliar with) to a "national poet hero" I'd be looking for an obscure failed 19th century one. The guy who tried to ride the Forest Finns to glory in Sweden comes to mind. I'm not suggesting Foote is as pathetic a character as Bean, but there's a conceit in claiming Homer as the equivalent of your "national poet."
Hell, last time I looked seriously at US culture, people would have been offended by a classical comparison—they knew they could do better than the Greeks in the 1970s.
>>385428
Ken Burns Baseball is GOAT
>>392044
It is not so much his purpose as a it is a consequence of writing a good history. It narrativizes the past, that's just what it does. So yes it is a role played by Foote, and I never said anything about praise. He should not be praised for that as a historian (I would still praise him for it as a storyteller, but that doesn't seem to be what you're interested in).
I understood what you meant by imaginary, I guess it sounds awkward to me though, why not just use imagination? The national imagination reads much better and makes as much sense. Regardless, thanks for the explanation.
Foote is so clearly a national poet though. I follow you regarding everything you said, I'm just struggling to see the relevance. Foote can be a fine historian and a Homer-figure at once.
OP here. I was so excited when I saw this thread had 53 replies. God fucking damn it /lit/.
>>393102
>Foote is so clearly a national poet though. I follow you regarding everything you said, I'm just struggling to see the relevance. Foote can be a fine historian and a Homer-figure at once.
I just find it really derogatory to compare a historian with a fictive author. Like calling your wife a whore outside the bedroom because she fucks and you share finances.
