Includes bibliographical references and index. "First published 2015 by Routledge."
Contents:
Introduction / Alexander Lyon Macfie -- PART I. PHILOSOPHY -- History as fiction : the pragmatic truth / Jonathan Gorman -- Fiction, imagination and the fictive : the literary aesthetics of historying / Alun Munslow -- PART II. LITERATURE -- 'Fantastic concoction of the human brain' : Virginia Woolf and the fiction of history / Beverley Southgate -- The Jeddah Incident : a case study in the origins of history and fiction / Alexander Lyon Macfie -- Dickens the historian, Carlyle the novelist, and Dickens, Carlyle and the French Revolution / David Paroissien -- PART III. FILM -- The siege, the book and the film : Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) / Claire Norton and Mark Donnelly -- The end of the war in Stalinist film and legend / Judith Devlin -- Unsettling the revival : Australian historical films as national critique / Sarah Pinto -- Historical representation unchained : history, fiction and Quentin Tarantino / Kalle Pihlainen -- PART IV. POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES -- Rewriting Algeria, past and present : history and cultural politics in two novels by Tahar Djaout / Jane Hiddleston -- Temporal disjunction in the postcolonial historical novel : re-reading time with Achebe and Rushdie / Hamish Dalley -- PART V. INTERVIEWS -- 'Rearranging the past' : Penelope Lively in conversation with Beverley Southgate -- 'History with the shatter-marks' : Adam Thorpe in conversation with Natasha Alden.
Summary:
"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"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.