Where Paul questioned while having critically read White's work, White answered evasively. It would not be an overstatement to say Paul was overshadowed by White, especially on a rhetorical level. They addressed the desire for utopian alternatives, that runs as a leitmotiv through White’s work, and the discursive articulation of this desire in (post)modernist historical writing.Interesting to see was the contrast between White, an old charismatic erudite intellectual, and Paul, a young intelligent sharp scholar. On thursday, May the 29th, White was interviewed in public by Herman Paul, Lecturer in Historical Theory, and Ernst van Alphen, Professor of Literary Studies. The author of Metahistory (1973), Tropics of Discourse (1978), The Content of the Form (1987), and Figural Realism (1999), Professor White has also published recent essays on historical fiction, witness literature, and Holocaust representation. Hayden White, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, has been described as "perhaps the premier academic essayist of our times." Compulsory reading for graduate students throughout the humanities, his essays on historical representation and narrative discourse have strongly contributed to a "narrative turn" in the study of historical thought.
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