Research On The Historical Thought Of Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was one of the famous historian of England in the nineteenth century. His historical view pay attention to the combination of the authenticity of history and act,to precise selection and to reveal the historical laws. The historical view of his had heavily been influenced on the View of Gradual Progress, Constitutional History, the View of National Superiority and the View of Social History. His historiography work emphasizes the integrity of the overall planning、the use of a variety of artistic techniques and popularity of statements.Through the history works of Macaulay, the dissertation will summarize Macaulay’s historical career, and recount the historiography thought and practice of Macaulay, besides, it also will talk about the enlightenment gave by him. The dissertation consists of three parts which are Introduction, Text and Epilogue.Introduction:mainly explains and researches the reason and significance of Macaulay’s historical thought, analyses the overseas and domestic research status of Macaulay’ historical thought, moreover, it also illuminates the innovation, deficiency and research method of this dissertation.Chapter One:summarizes Macaulay’s historical career. Mainly generalizes the circumstances of his birth, his life experience in politics and his track of history research.Chapter Two:Elaborates the self-quality which Macaulay required for historians to write the history work. A good historian should guarantee the authenticity of his history works, select the representative historical materials, should use the imagination to restore the truth, should show people the popular history, should reveal the truth and guide the future finally.Chapter Three:roundly expounds the historical view of Macaulay.The historical view of his had heavily been influenced on the View of Gradual Progress, Constitutional History, the View of National Superiority and the View of Social History.It emphasizes that the View of Gradual Progress was the basis of other thought, and expatiates Macaulay’s Constitutional History, the View of National Superiority and the View of Social History.Chapter Four:summarizes the art of writing in Macaulay’historical works. Macaulay paid attention to the narrativity of history, emphasized the integrality and plot of narrative, emphasized the application of several writing techniques, emphasized the integrality and plot of narrative, used the parallel sentence pattern, used the popular and beautiful language.Epilogue:mainly summarizes Macaulay’s historiography thought,the dialectical analysis of the advantage and disadvantages of his historiography thought,to historiography research overview of his historiography thought enlightenment,so as to improve the consciousness of historical research.