Contents -- Foreword: Figuring Out What Matters -- or, The Microphysics of History Wlad Godzich -- Part I. Inverted Perspective -- Introduction:How Much Sense Does Sense Making Make? Californian Retrospective to a German Question -- 1. The Consequences of an Aesthetics of Reception: A Deferred Overture -- Part II. Historical Representation and Life World -- 2. Metahistorical Historiography? -- 3. The Role of Narration in Narrative Genres -- 4. "Narrating the Past Just as if It Were Your Own Time" An Essay on the Anthropology of Historiography -- Part III. Failures of Modernity -- 5. A History of the Concept "Modern" -- 6. Laughter and Arbitrariness, Subjectivity and Seriousness: The Libro de buen amor, the Celestina, and the Style of Sense Production in Early Modern Times -- 7. Who Were the Philosophes? -- 8. Outline of a Literary History of the French Revolution -- 9. "Phoenix from the Ashes" -- or, From Canon to Classic -- Part IV. After Literature? -- 10. Pathologies in the System of Literature -- 11. It's Just a Game: On the History of Media, Sport, and the Public -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.