Among topical questions on historical interpretation discussed in this article the autor tries to sketch answers on folowing: how are we to accept the challenge that semiotics and postmodernism poses to historical writing and at the same time preserve some of the traditional goals that have always engaged historians on the deepest level of their commitment to understanding the past: to recover the ways in which men and women have struggled with the contingencies and complexities of their lives in terms of the fates that history deals out to them and have transformed the worlds they inherit and pass on to future generations ? Are we to believe that our representations of the past are more than illusory realist canvases, intelligible lies we tell ourselvs and others in order to mask our fear that what lurks behind is the unintelligible truth of human experience, which defies any and all attempts to apprehend it in the now fractured artifice of our words?Med temeljnimi vprašanji historične interpretacije, ki jih avtorica obravnava v svojem prispevku skuša skicirati odgovore predvsem na naslednje: Kako naj zgodovinarji sprejmemo izziv, ki ga semiotika in postmodernizem postavljata piscem zgodovine in istočasno ohranimo nekatere od tradicionalnih ciljev, ki so vselej zavezovali zgodovinarje na globjih nivojih njihove predanosti razumevanju preteklosti: oživljanje načinov, s katerimi se moški in ženske spopadajo z nepredvidljivostjo in kompleksnostjo svojih življenj, v smislu usod, ki jih jim je zgodovina dodelila, načinov, s katerimi spreminjajo podedovane svetove ter jih predajajo prihodnjim generacijam? Ali naj verjamem, da so naše predstavitve preteklosti več kot iluzorna realistična platna, razumljive laži, kijih pripovedujemo sebi in drugim zato, da bi prikrili našo bojazen, da je tisto, kar se skriva za njimi, nerazumljena resničnost človeškega izkustva, ki kljubuje vsakršnemu in vsem poskusom razumevanja v sedaj razdrobljeni spretnosti naših besed
