The Research On Barbara W.Tuchman's Historical Writing

Barbara Tuchman(1912-1989)is a famous American historian of the 20 th century.She has written many best sellers,two of which have won the Pulitzer Prize;their history is open to the public,and the popularity of historiography is emphasized.Since the Second World War,there have been two major changes in the history of Western history.For the first time,the "new historiography"(also known as "social history")since the mid-1950 s challenged the traditional historiography represented by Ranke.The political history was gradually replaced by social history and became the mainstream of historical studies.The most important historical schools in this period are the yearbook school,social science history,measurement history,and psychology history.The second time was the reflection of social history in the1970 s.There has been a trend of "rejuvenation of narratives." Since the "rejuvenation of narratives",a group of historians have practiced and left a rich work.Tachman's historical writing practice is slightly earlier than this trend,but the creation of his main works is consistent with this trend of thought.Tachman has created more than a dozen books in his life,and these works have been loved by many readers in the United States.In recent years,the country has also begun to introduce and translate its works,and Tachman has also begun to receive the attention of domestic historians and readers.But Tachman has also been criticized by some professional historians.The reason why her work has caused a lot of controversy is that she uses the method of “telling stories” to write history;those who love her think that her works are beautiful.The details are rich;critics mainly propose that this "storytelling" approach is not a qualified historian,and his work is not academic.The current research on Tachman has just started.The controversy about Tachman is more in the introduction of book reviews and biographies;this simple comment is lack of depth for understanding Tachman and his historical writing.This article mainly uses the text analysis and the historical analysis,on the basis of collecting and sorting out the literature,unifies the domestic and foreign research to analyze tuchman's historical writing characteristic and the thought.In this paper,through combing Tuchman's life and academic works,the historical narrative background of Tuchman has been found and placed in the development of western historiography since the World War II.Through the analysis of several representative works of Tuchman,the uniqueness of her historical narrative is explored.This paper explores Tuchman's historical narrative.First of all,it explains the reasons for choosing the topic,indicate the current research status at home and abroad and ummarizes the innovation and shortcomings of this paper.The first part mainly introduces Tuchman's life and arranges her academic research achievements.The second part analyzes the characteristics of Tuchman's historical narration in combination with Tuchman's works.This paper summarizes the three characteristics of character-centered,war history writing and writing for readers.The third part explores the thoughts behind Tuchman's historical writing,andanalyzes it from the scopes of artistic creation,historical data,details and writing.Finally,the paper ends with an overall comment on Tuchman's contribution to historical writing.