Academic literature on the topic 'Historiographic metafiction'

The author of this article discusses theoretical approaches for analyzing the contemporary historical novel. The goal of the article is to present Canadian author Linda Hutcheon’s theory of historiographic metafiction as a tool suitable for the interpretation of discursive poetics in the postmodern, as well as the modern, historical novel. Ivanauskaitė reviews Hutcheon’s interpretation of the postmodern historical novel, and then argues that this theory is an instrument that can be adapted to the study of various other types of contemporary historical prose. The article explores connections between literary and historical inter/para-texts.Grounding the concept of historiographic metafiction in the principle of the independence (or coexistence) of literature and history allows attention to be focused on the literary aspect of historiographic metafiction – to analyze it as representation of historical and all cultural reality, and to identify its meanings by highlighting literary forms of expression. An example of this could be the metafictional poetics of irony and parody – their exclusive position and role in the rewriting (altering) of historical and literary representations.While the concept of historiographic metafiction is fundamentally grounded in Hutcheon’s theory, its narrative content is open. The author of this article demonstrates that it can be complemented (expanded) by using, for example, the analytical methods of Gérard Genette and other narrative theorists to examine the genres and cultural articulation of different historical novels. Innovative structural adaptation of this theory is therefore possible. Moreover, the historiographic metafictional approach makes it possible to construct (create) concrete comparative methods for studying contemporary historical novels. She comes to the conclusion that, as a distinct theoretical approach for examining the contemporary historical novel (or other genres of historical prose), historiographic metafiction consists of three strata: the intranarrative, the paranarrative, and the discursive. To illustrate this, she presents an analysis of Herkus Kunčius’s novel Nepasigalėti Dušanskio (Don’t Pity Dušanskis).

The incredulity towards metanarratives in the postmodernist era holds serious implications for historiography. Two "historiographic metafictional novels" (Hutcheon's term), one Flemish and one Afrikaans, are discussed in this article. There is a significant difference in the way these two texts react to ontological doubt. On the one hand there is a celebration of the loss of metanarratives in Het beleg van Laken (Walter van den Broeck). On the other hand this loss is used in a very serious way to undermine existing metanarratives in Kroniek uit die doofpot (John Miles). The joyous humour and celebration in Het beleg van Laken is absent in Kroniek uit die doofpot. It is concluded that some historiographic metafiction frivolously celebrates decentring and the incredulity towards metanarratives. In other historiographic metafiction ontological doubt manifests without humour or celebration and serves to undermine metanarratives. It might he true that the celebration belongs to a late capitalist Western culture whereas it is unsuitable for a developing country.

This study was designed to trace the deconstruction of authoritative officialized history in fiction through Postmodern Historigraphic Metafiction. Historiographic Metafiction dismantles the metanarrative of official history and raises the voice of silenced subaltern thus generates mininarratives. The study is thus grounded in Postmodern Historiographic Metafictional theory of Linda Hutcheon for investigation of the “subversive strategies” of officialized history and deconstruction of positively accentuated binary of “us” and negatively accentuated binary of “them” in the backdrop of postcolonial literary text Nervous Conditions. Norman Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis is taken up as a research method for the analysis of fictionalized historical work under study. Finally, text is analyzed leading to the conclusion of the study. The study shows that fiction unveils the official overriding history and provides new perspectives of untold historical events.

This paper discusses the representation of historiographic metafiction in the postmodern Arabic and Latin novel. Linda Hutcheon coined the term of Historiographic metafiction. She claims that the postmodern novel contains selfreflexivity, intertextuality, parody. Although some critics see that the postmodern novel is western, Edward Saeed argues that art is “worldly”; therefore, Hutcheon sees that the postmodern novel may be “worldly”. The researcher relies on Saeed and Hutcheon to argue that the representation of historiographic metafiction may be found in Mawt Saġīr and Sāʿī Barīd Nayrūdā.

The ambiguity between reality and fiction haunts Einar Már Guðmundsson’s novel Hundadagar (Dog Days, 2015), as it is a fictional narrative about factual, historical figures and events, such as Jörgen Jörgensen, Rev. Jón Steingrímsson, Finnur Magnússon and Guðrún Johnsen, while the same can be said about many other novels labeled as postmodernism. Canadian literary scholar Linda Hutcheon coined the concept of historiographic metafiction to describe fictions as such, which are “intensely self-reflexive”, while “paradoxically lay claim to historical events and personages”. Hutcheon suggests that historiographic metafictions fully illuminate the very way in which postmodernism entangles itself with both the epistemological and ontological status of history. This paper begins with an introduction to Hutcheon’s theoretical contributions on postmodernism, postmodern literature and the relationship between history and fiction, followed by a reading of Hundadagar as a historiographic metafiction. The narrator’s strategies—such as parataxis, metanarrative comments, we-narrative discourse and documentary intertext—largely indicate an imitation, a revelation, or say, a parody of the process of historian’s writings. The paper further suggests that it is the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008 that prompts the narrator to revisit the 18. and 19. century, since the financial crisis takes the role of a rupture of the Enlightenment ideals, leading to disorder and chaos. Moreover, the narrator finds an uncanny similarity between the past and the present, as if the history has been repeating itself. The spectre of history keeps (re)appearing in a deferred temporality. While revisiting the past, the narrator also (re)visits the present in an allegorical way. In a word, as a historiographic metafiction, Einar Már Guðmundsson’s Hundadagar is “fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political”, just as Hutcheon’s perception of postmodernism.

This study traces the representation of deconstructed history in Gerald Vizenors fictional work The Heirs of Columbus. The study highlights the metanarrative techniques through which the officialized history is subverted and decentralized. The study is grounded in postmodern Historiographic Metafiction theory of Linda Hutcheon for investigation of the data. Historiographic metafiction dismantles the overriding official version of history and presents many mini versions of truths. The study exhibits the dismantled version of overriding history of American Indians. It gives an insight into the American Indian approach of United States history.

Abstract This article has a dual focus. It demonstrates the recent repoliticization of Linda Hutcheon’s category of historiographic metafiction through the extension of Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory to lesbian novelists, arguing that this theoretical framework offers a lens through which we can understand some recent trends in lesbian historical fiction. Focusing on the novelist and critic Emma Donoghue’s 2008 novel The Sealed Letter, it also argues that this text’s evocation of an imagined lesbian past, and its use of metafictional techniques, are illuminated by reading it as a highly political engagement with lesbian postmemory.