Historiographical metafiction
Historiographic metafiction is a term coined in 1988 by literary scholar Linda Hutcheon to describe a new genre of postmodern historical novel that has enjoyed great popularity since the 1960s.
Unlike the traditional historical novel by Walter Scott is marked, the historiographical metafiction is characterized by the strong use of metafictional from funds. The possibility of historical knowledge is strongly questioned. Often this happens by blurring the line between fiction and historiography ; by highlighting and problematizing its own fictionality, historiographical metafiction questions the possibility of neutral historiography per se.
Frequently used stylistic devices in this process include reflections on the characteristics of the story that are built into the novel, anachronisms that appear in the narrative and break through the illusion , or very uncertain narrative situations that challenge the reader to question the given information. Historical characters who appear in these novels are mostly recognizably strongly fictionalized. Pastiche and parody are central stylistic devices in the representation of figures.
Examples of novels that are assigned to this genre include John Fowles ' Die Beliebte des French Lieutenant , Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children , Michael Ondaatjes The English Patient or Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon .
literature
- Linda Hutcheon: A Poetics of Postmodernism , Routledge: London 1988, ISBN 0-415-00706-2
- Christina Kotte: Ethical Dimensions in British Historiographic Metafiction: Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, Penelope Lively . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: Trier 2002, (= Studies in English Literary and Cultural History , 2), ISBN 3-88476-486-1
- Ansgar Nünning: From historical fiction to historiographical metafiction , Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: Trier 1995, ISBN 3-88476-166-8
- Patricia Waugh: Metafiction , Routledge: London 1984, ISBN 0-415-03006-4