ABSTRACT
Chapter One surveyed the various types of historical enquiry and presentation, and singled out narrative history as that form whose intellectual structuring promises both a uniquely coherent identity and an equation with what history is traditionally regarded as being about. Chapter Two therefore studied the structure of narrative in general in order to become as intimate as possible with its rationale, subjectmatter, parameters, and potential. At certain points that analysis generated issues of special relevance to the historian because of their direct implications for his/her practice. The purpose now of Chapter Three is to explore and elaborate upon these issues; not so much, however, with a view to instructing historians how to prepare valid narrative, but more to encourage that practice by defending its integrity where it might be subject to untutored criticism, and to suggest ways of overcoming certain inherent difficulties in its construction. Primarily concerned here, then, with the practising historian, I leave to the next chapter the explicit derivation of theoretical principles intimated by this practice-and to the final chapter an exemplification of narrative history, where I will treat of the history of (political) thought. This chapter therefore restricts attention to those especially pertinent and potentially problematic issues appertaining to any kind of historical narrative.
