Annals

Annals (Latin annālis, yearly from annus, a year) are a concise form of historical representation which record events chronologically, year by year. The Oxford English Dictionary defines annals as "a narrative of events written year by year". In The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Hayden White discusses annals in contrast to chronicles and history, two other forms of historical representation. He claims that annals lack a "social center". A social center locates the list of events in time to a point of view, which would imply the moral importance of the events. In contrast to the chronicle, annals do not organize events by topics, such as the reigns of kings. Unlike history, the annal does not conclude and tie up all the loose ends, but simply terminates. The annalist leaves the recorded events unexplained and often one event has as equal weight as another. Furthermore, annalists represent events as happening to humankind, rather than human beings causing events.

Famous quotes containing the word annals:

“Happy the people whose annals are vacant.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)

“My dear parents, he said, and Mr and Mrs Micks, heroic figures, unique in the annals of cloistered fornication, filled the kitchen.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

“The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders
His last award, will have the long grass grow
Above his burnt-out brain and sapless cinders.
If I might augur, I should rate but low
Their chances: they are too numerous, like the thirty
Mock tyrants, when Rome’s annals wax’d but dirty.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)