Ankersmit proposes a theory of historical experience as the birthplace of historical consciousness and historical writing

through which historians are expected to transcend the constraints of transcendentalist epistemology and achieve a more authentic interaction with the "past" as the noumenon of history. To convey historical experience

Ankersmit calls for a Romantic historical writing that replaces epistemological tools with the historian’s full persona

using a sensationalist

associative vocabulary that brings language close to people’s immediate experience of the world.