Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne's Mastering of Bavaria
Stuart Airlie
Among the more striking literary creations of Herman Melville is a short story entitiled ‘Bartleby’. The eponymous hero law-clerk who gradually withdraws from his employer's power, and ultimately world, by meeting all requests – to copy texts, quit premises, co-operate with authorities prison which intransigence finally leads him phrase, ‘I would prefer not to.’ Melville's existential fable disquieting on sorts levels it has, perhaps, special resonance for historians. story's narrator Bartleby's employer, tranquil elderly man baffled latter's stubbornness. One problems faces shortage sources: ‘this … was one these beings whom nothing ascertainable, except trom original sources those are very small’. After death, learns that he had worked in Dead Letter Office Washington, ends vision piles lost ‘dead’ documents artefacts whose texts meanings remain unread beyond recall. As text haunted notions unknowability crushing weight dead letters, ‘Bartleby’ seems speak directly some pre-occupations historians post-modernist era.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society