Barthes' important essay “Historical Discourse” (1967), for example, raised a fundamental issue regarding the status of historical writing: “is there in fact any specific difference between factual and imaginary narrative, any linguistic feature by which we may distinguish on the one hand the mode appropriate to the relation of historical events … and on the other hand the mode appropriate to the epic, novel or drama?”18 By questioning the factual status of historical narrative, Barthes opened up the floodgates of discussion about the relevance of literary and linguistic theory for historical practice. Taking as his examples French Romantic historians such as Jules Michelet, Barthes analyzed their mode of presenting the historical past, according to tropes (figures of speech, i.e. metaphor or metonymy) and “shifters” (markers of the transition from a self-referential to an ostensibly more “objective” mode of representation). The whole structure of historical knowledge, as Barthes described it, depended on the system of literary representation rather than facts gleaned from archival documents.