ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to establish a new conceptual framework that provides a revised understanding of narratives as a rational practice. The principles of organization brought to light by the Gestalt school of experimental psychology illuminate the principles underlying an organizational logic that historians engage in when constructing a narrative.
To illustrate how these principles operate in historical narratives, and how they prove to be rational, this chapter examines classic historical works such as Marx's introduction of the concept of surplus value; Vico's Autobiography, Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance, Koselleck's Futures Past, E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, and Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages. My analysis shows that narrative entails its own kind of explanatory structure. It proves to be a way of thinking that provides meaning and structure to what is otherwise unstructured and undetermined.
