This article considers the history of the historical novel, alongside the development of contemporary historiographic theory. It maps the de velopment of the historical novel from its popular form in the nineteenth-century Romantic period, a time when the novels of Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo were rarely subject to critical appraisal, through to the contemporary, postmodern mode where historical narrative is often scrutinised for its (re)presentation of historical 'truth'. I analyse the works of writers such as Julian Barnes and Jonathan Safran Foer to reflect the blurred lines between narrative histories and stories told in the traditional mode. I ask scholars and readers of the past to overcome their demand that historical works must always present clear, documented evidence to be take challenge the assumption that all fictions are merely stories conjured in a writer's mind. This article examines how much 'truth' a fictive text may command, and asks that narrative is not seen to be compromising 'truth' but instead in terms of its ability to offer readers access to a past unavailable to traditional or 'proper' modes of historical research. I argue that narrative history allows experience an opportunity, and that it is often the encounters we have and the stories we tell that make history accessible, memorable and applicable to our present.
Ways and Means: To Blur, but not Sacrifice, the Laws of Fact and Fiction
Narrative histories, or historical fictions, have not been readily accepted in the academy as a legitimate form of history. More than any other contemporary literary form, narrative history has struggled to find acceptance within professional frameworks designated as either history or fiction. To accept narrative as a precise, learned method of historical representation, we would first have to overcome the demand that historical works must present clear, documented evidence to be taken as true, and challenge the assumption that all fictions are merely stories conjured in a writer's mind. Such works are often excluded from being seen as history, or as having something to offer an audience interested in the past being represented