ABSTRACT
This essay offers reflections on the volume as a whole and its individual essays in the context of the overarching question of “genre” in early modern historical writing. It offers explanations for the multiplication and mutation of historical genres between the advent of printing and the late eighteenth century; it argues that varieties of historical writing remained sufficiently unstable and adaptable to new social, cultural and political circumstances that the term genre can be applied only very loosely to history's different forms during this period. Finally, the chapter offers a set of ten dimensions along which historical genres can be analyzed and grouped.
