On promises and fulfillments

Which are the promises that dwell in the modernist figurations?

Abstract

In this work, we propose to revisit the fiction of figuration based on Hayden White’s appropriation of it in his works on the writing of history, narrative, and the representation of the past. We will analyze the simile of White’s promise to characterize figuration in general and the use of figural interpretation by Erich Auerbach and literary modernism in particular. We will suggest that White reads that this type of fiction is used in Western literature to represent reality according to the logic of promise. When the so-called “modernist style” appears, figuration is presented as the promise of a promise, as the possibility of a figure. This suggestion is completed with the idea that we are witnessing a gradual agency of the human capacity to figure in figural interpretation. This agency goes from the point of view of the “eye of God” to poetic self-awareness about figurative possibilities that dwell at any time.