Fiction And The Incompleteness Of History

Based on the author's thesis (Doctoral--University of Hong Kong, 2005).

With reference to Paul Ricoeur's conception of the interconnectedness of history and fiction, this comparative literary study examines narrative strategies that three contemporary writers of fiction - Toni Morrison, V. S. Naipaul, and Ben Okri - have devised to counteract the incompleteness of historical representation. In her novel Beloved Morrison redefines the slave-narrative tradition and reveals an alternative history of slavery by unveiling the interior lives of her characters. Through a hybrid prose that mixes fiction with history in the novels The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World, Naipaul illuminates « areas of darkness in the diasporic world of East Indian Trinidadians and provides new ways of transforming English literary and cultural history. Focusing on West African identity and community, Okri brings a mythic and fantastic dimension to postcolonial fiction as a way of giving a voice to people who are generally without power and almost without any place in a world of inequality and injustice. Probing into historical incompleteness, this study underscores the indispensable role of fiction in representing life, rectifying history, and enlarging reality.

"An introduction to the life and thought of Kurt Gödel, who transformed our conception of math forever"--Provided by publisher.

With Possible Worlds of Fiction and History, Lubomír Doležel reexamines the claim—made first by Roland Barthes and then popularized by Hayden White—that "there is no fundamental distinction between fiction and history." Doležel rejects this assertion and demonstrates how literary and discourse theory can help the historian to restate the difference between fiction and history. He challenges scholars to reassess the postmodern viewpoint by reintroducing the idea of possible worlds. Possible-worlds semantics reveals that possible worlds of fiction and possible worlds of history differ in their origins, cultural functions, and structural and semantic features. Doležel’s book is the first systematic application of this idea to the theory and philosophy of history. Possible Worlds of Fiction and History is the crowning work of one of literary theory’s most engaged thinkers.

The Fiction of History sets out a number of themes in the relationship between history and fiction, emphasising the tensions and dilemmas created in this relationship and examining how various writers have dealt with these. In the first part, two chapters discuss the philosophy behind the connection between fiction and history, whether history is fiction, and the distinction between the past and history. Part two goes on to discuss the relationship between history and literature using case studies such as Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens. Part three looks at television and film (as well as other media) through case studies such as the film Welcome to Sarajevo and Soviet and Australian films. Part four considers a particular theme that has prominence in both history and literature, postcolonial studies, focusing on the issues of fictions of nationhood and civilization and the historical novel in postcolonial contexts. Finally, the fifth section comprises two interviews with novelists Penelope Lively and Adam Thorpe and discusses the ways in which their works explore the nature of history itself.

The relationship between history and fiction has always been a controversial one. Can we ever know that a historical narrative is giving us a true account of what actually happened? Provocative and fascinating, this book is an original and insightful examination of the ways in which history is - and might be - written. It traces History's doubleness and divided nature, beginning with its founding figures, Herodotus and Thucydides, right up to the key figures of historical reflection, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Hayden White. The authors explore the challenges posed by postmodernism to history and the literary conventions of most historical writing. In this second edition they bring their history of history up to the present in their study of the History Wars and new approaches to world history and environmental history.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 90, , course: Litrary Criticism, language: English, abstract: In this paper the novel "My Name Is Red" by the Turkish writer Pamuk was analyzed all the while clarifying the implementation of historiography (the usage of historical events under the influence of a certain narrator) which stemmed from the postmodernist trend followed in the novel, touching on its effect on major themes developed in the novel. The paper exposed how in the novel the concept of historiography is brilliantly used depending on an intricately woven web of characters that directly expose their inner thoughts to the reader. Each one of the different narrators in the novel contributed to the formation of the historical events depicted in it, exposing wishes on the mind of the author to be at peace with those distinguishing differences forming each civilization; as those characters gave a personalized view point, they also represented an exploring effort intended by Pamuk to shed light on differences between east and west, with the art of miniature painting as the differentiator.

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

This Companion offers a compelling engagement with British fiction from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Since 1945, British literature has served to mirror profound social, geopolitical and environmental change. Written by a host of leading scholars, this volume explores the myriad cultural movements and literary genres that have affected the development of postwar British fiction, showing how writers have given voice to matters of racial, regional and sexual identity. Covering subjects from immigration and ecology to science and globalism, this Companion draws on the latest critical innovations to provide insights into the traditions shaping the literary landscape of modern Britain, thus making it an essential resource for students and specialists alike.

Magical realism was one of the most significant literary developments in the last century. It has become synonymous with the seductive fictions of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Ben Okri, Jeanette Winterson and Peter Carey. However, the genre has also become known for its theoretical indeterminacy. In fact, exoticist speculation, inspired by the links between magical realist literature and the world's cultural or political margins, has thrown the category into critical disrepute. This book rescues magical realism from misreadings and misdemeanours, tracing the historical development of the literary genre and analysing an original spectrum of magical realist texts from Latin America, Africa, India, Canada, the US, the UK and Australia. It asks such questions as: How did magical realism come to take over the world? What is the nature of its allure? Also, how does the marginal status of its authors inform the genre? Does magical realism have a political agenda? This book uses postcolonial theory to investigate notions of cultural identity and post-structural theory to examine the narrative strategies of magical realism, presenting a comprehensive historical and theoretical overview of the genre and a politically urgent argument about its subversive potentialities.