The Reader! The Reader! The Mimetic Challenge of Addressivity and Response in Historical Writing

What expectations in readers make history read so widely? What is it readers do when they read history? And what is there about and in the texts of historical writing that makes them attractive to readers for a start? These questions inform this essay, which aims to introduce the missing link of the reader of the historical text to the discussion of historical writing as literary artefact, and to consider some of the implications involved in this procedure. Building on Arne Melberg, Mimesis – en repetition (Stockholm: Brutus stlings Bokf rlag Symposion, 1992), the Author concludes by urging on a negotiation of mainstream history in the direction of the mimetically effective