ABSTRACT

Tenuous as the definition of historical writings may have been and much as the ancient historical text was unreliable, some would say even baseless, it seems that history, as a unique field of human inquiry first conceived of by the Greeks, was based on some sort of distinction between truth and fiction. All writing had to be coherent to carry meaning, but history alone was shouldered with the task of describing what truly happened. Poetry could conjure up an endless number of possible worlds. History alone set itself the task of reconstructing the real world, its genesis and transmutations.