ABSTRACT
THE REALITY OF THE PAST AND HISTORICAL NARRATION In his philosophical investigation of historical narration, Paul Ricoeur begins with the question that underlies all the others: “What does the term ‘real’ mean when it is applied to the historical past?”1 As Ricoeur observes, it is an embarrassing question because answering it embroils the historian in a discussion of the problems of knowledge: the documents on which the reality of the past is predicated are fragmentary, selective, and conserved in the interest of particular social forces and political initiatives. Despite what the historical science brings in terms of rigor and method, the historian can only narrate what the historical record, with its biases, allows him to know or infer about the past.
