Historical Narrative Definition with Examples

Historical Narrative or Narrative history is the practice of writing history in a story-based form.

It can be divided into two sub fields: The traditional narrative and The modern narrative.

  1. Traditional narrative focuses on the chronological order of history. It is event driven and tends to center upon individuals, action, and intention.
  2. Modern narrative typically focuses on structures and general trends.

In other words, narrative history narrates the events: when, where, and why a certain event occurred, its larger significance or context, and who the important participants were.

For better and detailed understanding of such narratives: A typical question which falls into this category of narrative history assignment, and one that is integral to our larger thematic focus on events, the events that are marked are well documented and recorded. To conclude the benefits of such events / assignments are described below:

  • Most importantly, they help us to write on a straightforward topic.
  • Secondly, they improve our awareness of cause and effect and the importance of sequence of events. 
  • Finally, they also ask us to develop a thesis and formulate a conclusion.

We talk about a historical event, combining facts with characters and imaginative situations. When you write history, you are combining fiction and nonfiction. As non-fiction, historical accounts describe individuals who lived through real events and real events. However, historical accounts also include fictional characters and details that the author has in mind.

A historical narrative should have the following characteristics:

  • Accurate historic events and details of actual places
  • One person’s point of view
  • Some characters and circumstances invented by the writer
  • Chronological organization