Abstract
The future of historical theory would benefit from a careful revisitation of the theoretical proposals of the last 50 years, with the goal of finding neglected notions which may prove of theoretical value. Hayden White’s unique version of dialectics is such a notion. Dialectics expresses an awareness of the role of language in the systematic comprehension of reality by following a sequence of apprehensions: thus, a ‘dialectical narrativity’. An analysis of an episode in Jules Michelet’s medieval history suggests that dialectical narrativity was immanent in his presentation of historical understanding.