The Element of Art in Gibbon's History

Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory

“…Gibbon exhibits no defensiveness about "the natural historical order," still less any minimizing of time's role in arrangement, least of all any recommendation of anachrony as the inherently superior "method." (Gibbon would accordingly not thank his own analysts, e.g., Keast [1956], for dissociating the art of Decline and Fall from its chronology.) On the contrary, he sees no reason why the in-medias-res rule should govern epic composition itself.…”