Story and History : Wiley Blackwell : 9780631175124 : 0631175121 : 17 May 1990 : A comprehensive , ambitious, and demanding critique of eighteenth-century English and French fiction, Story and History rereads the major works of the period as components in a systematic exploration of how the ordering of experience by individuals might relate to larger orders of authority. Interpreting the evolving thematic pattern of fiction in both countries as a plot in its own right, William Ray argues that the novel's rise in the eighteenth century coincided with a growing conviction - which the genre both reflected and fostered - that selfhood, social identity, public authority, and ultimately even historical truth and cultural values, all hinge on narrative representation. From the early novels of individualism, which emphasize the relating of personal experience as a means of altering social hierarchies and securing privileges for the exceptional individual, to the later metanovels, whose compl