age of William A. Dunning

Stripped of the intent of its author, L. Frank Baum, the children's fairy tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was left to be understood only within a changing cultural construct. Historian Hayden White, arguing that the similarities between a novel and a work of history were more significant than their differences, insisted that history was preeminently a subsection of literature. According to White, historical narratives were manifestly verbal fictions, and the only acceptable grounds upon which the historian should choose his historical perspective were the moral and the aesthetic. White conflated historical consciousness with myth and blurred the boundary that had long divided history from fiction. Just as changing cultural concerns infused the Dorothy of Baum's children's literature with meaning so social, cultural, and moral imperatives came to dictate the content of historical stories particularly in the historiography of the Reconstruction era. The twenty first century conception of Reconstruction is different from the conception influential at the start of the twentieth. In assessing the scholarship of William A. Dunning, contemporary historians have adopted a new paradigm when describing the scholar's Reconstruction accounts. Modern commentators reject Dunning's authorial intention and the contextual framework needed to define it. Thus, Dunning has receded into the "realm of myth." Careful attendance to Dunning's historical context, contemporary audience, and his authorial intent, will reposition the perspective for analysis of Dunning's work. Removing Dunning from abstract analysis will allow historians to arrive at an understanding of his work, and view the importance of the real Dunning, rather than the fabricated image constructed from a partial and even fragmented reading of his work.