Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe is a work of historiography by Hayden White first published in 1973. On the second page of his introduction, White stated: My own analysis of the deep structure of the historical imagination of Nineteenth century Europe is intended to provide a new perspective on the current debate over the nature and function of historical knowledge. The theoretical framework is outlined in the first 50 pages of the book, which consider in detail eight major figures of 19th-century history and the philosophy of history. The larger context of historiography and writing in general is also considered. White's approach uses systematically a fourfold structural schema with two terms mediating between a pair of opposites. Source: Wikipedia (en)