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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by Kate Baldwin and Glenn Hendler for the Department of English. "July 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-215).

History as a school subject confronts a child with events, motives for action, and moral dilemmas, demanding a high level of abstract reasoning. Before the child reaches the cognitive stage of formal operations (14 years), his abstract reasoning is limited and egocentric in terms of time concept and social consciousness. To supplement this lack of abstraction, it seems necessary to enrich the teaching of history by means of substitute experiences. In an analysis of different teaching methods, it was found that abstract historical facts become more palatable to the pupil when historical novels are used to replace direct experience. The pupil thus identifies with the historical character of his own age group, and encounters history on a human level, because an emotional involvement with the facts has taken place. If a historical novel is to be utilized successfully it must therefore be more than a feebly romanticized, and superficial account of historical facts. Such a novel should capture the exact atmosphere of a specific era. It should attain a delicate balance between fact and fiction, gripping intrigue and real life characters in order to form an emotional bridge between reality and abstract historical facts. In reviewing South African history from 1488 to 1915, it seems that the fiction possibilities of this era have been adequately exploited. Novelists have however given preference to events of a more spectacular nature. More attention and focus has been given to novels for older children and teenagers. There is a great variety of these novels, enabling the pupil of middle childhood and adolescence to identify with the characters, thus experiencing universal needs and universal problems. The natural affinity for fantasy of early childhood has however not been utilized fully. The historical novel concerning the history of indigenous race groups is scantily represented. This jeopardizes the employment of historical novels in promoting positive attitudes towards other races and meaningful co-existence in South Africa. / MBibl, PU vir CHO, 1985

Memento Mori and Other Stories follows historical characters straining against societal norms and pushing back against gender roles as they struggle for personal independence.

Student Number : 0420532W - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / In this Theoretical Introduction the reasons for the choice of the historical fiction genre for the creative component of this Research Report will become clear in relation to other notable examples of the genre, indeed the academic essay will revolve around primary concerns with regard to the narrative of historical fiction and the debates around the representation that the work engages. In the postscript to the academic essay the possible destination for publication will be considered, as well as a summation of the writing and revision process, and a rumination of the projected readership or audience. As the creative component will be submitted in partial form, the postscript to the theoretical introduction will extrapolate the rest of the project, so as to provide some sense of the intended eventual work. Finally a special thanks to Ashleigh Harris, whose untiring help and encouragement is deeply appreciated; and to my husband, Norman, whose concern and enormous patience has sustained this endeavour.

Canada has seen a veritable explosion in the production and popularity of historical fiction in recent decades. Works by women that present a feminist revision of national narratives have played a key part in this phenomenon. This thesis discusses three contemporary Canadian historical novels: Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007), Ami McKay’s The Birth House (2006), and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). By examining these novels through a settler colonial lens and with a specific interest in the critique of settler feminism, this thesis offers readings that can reveal how feminism operates within the confines of the settler fantasy. These readings suggest that women’s historical fiction offers an opportunity to consider different aspects of feminism in the settler setting and to consider different aspects of critiques of patriarchy in settler contexts. This thesis suggests that these novels present a settler women’s history that cannot be properly understood through the simplistic logic of male/female or colonizer/colonized oppositions, and that the ways the novels depict women’s interactions with patriarchal settler structures and institutions can contribute to critical understandings of a colonial history with which Canada continues to reckon.

In this dissertation, aspects of the creative process involved in `writing the past' are theorised from the site of practice, from the viewpoint of the empirical author. Certain poststructuralist and postmodernist discourses, however, have problematised and de-stabilised the concepts of `history' and the `past', and called into question the unitary and authoritative nature of `truth', `knowledge' and `reality'. These contestings of the ontological status of `history' have alerted us to the importance of previously marginalised perspectives on historical `reality', especially those relating to gender, race and religion. This situation presents considerable challenges to the writer of historical fiction and the historian alike, rendering it difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct the `past' without irony. In the light of a general `crisis of representation', fiction purporting to deal with an increasingly elusive `past' can no longer proceed in the relatively uncomplicated manner of the traditional historical novel, with its emphasis on sustaining the referential illusion of the empirical `past', as though the `truth' of `past events' could be revealed `as it really was'. Some of the options for re-writing history figurally are considered, and my novel Watermarks situated within them as a blend of traditional historical fiction, neo-historical or revisionary fiction, and the more extreme or satirical forms of historiographic metafiction which radically revise, challenge or subvert established ways of `writing the past'. The focus of the latter two forms is not so much on history as objective facts and artifacts, as on the pluralistic, and sometimes relativistic, concept of history as perspective(s). The dissertation explores the genesis of Watermarks, the theoretical and practical implications of writing a neo-historical fiction, the difficulties of `writing the past', and the fictional strategies employed to address them. The metafictional strategies of framed narratives or inset tales, multiple (and sometimes unreliable) narrators, and transformative repetitions of prior texts (intertextuality) are examined in the light of Bakhtin's concept of the "dialogic of the imagination", and are shown to be an important means by which past worlds may be established and at the same time subverted in the discourse of the novel. Each of these strategies re-affirms a view of `history' and the `past' as a matter of mediated and provisional `truths'. The role of intertextuality in particular is examined at length, firstly in terms of its theoretical implications for the traditional view of the author as originator of the text, and secondly in practical terms as an important means of producing a multivocal, interrogative text, a vital source of the diverse `languages' which characterise the discourse of the novel.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Failure haunts Mexico's historical imagination. Mexican intellectuals express a negative view of their country's history--especially vis-à-vis its nineteenth-century founding--and this negativity spills over into contemporary political and social discourse. To be sure, they have much to lament about the nineteenth century: multiple foreign invasions, rampant political instability and cronyism, excessive foreign debt, heavy-handed military leaders, and lest we forget, the loss of half the national territory. My dissertation analyzes narratives of failure in five historical novels, written between 1982 and 2005: Jorge Ibargüengoitia's Los pasos de López (1982), Rosa Beltrán's La corte de los ilusos (1995), Ignacio Solares' La invasión (2005), Fernando del Paso's Noticias del imperio (1987), and Enrique Serna's El seductor de la patria (1999). I define narratives of failure as discursive strategies that highlight--and often poeticize--perceived cultural, political, and social shortcomings. They are historical arguments that attempt to explain, justify, embellish, expose, or reinterpret contemporary problems as the atavistic result of prior shortcomings. They mediate between lofty aspirations and unsatisfied goals. They seek to ameliorate the psychological trauma resulting from loss. And despite apparent pessimism, these narratives tend to be fiercely nationalistic. It might be said that the transmission of failure narratives from one generation of intellectuals to the next has concretized their existence. Once in place, narratives of failure inform debates about nationhood, democracy, stability, and autonomy. Inertia propels these ideas forward. Despite the prevalence of these narratives in most genres, nowhere does failure manifest itself more clearly than in historical novels that recreate the nineteenth century. Furthermore these narratives are intimately tied up with the nation's guiding fictions. As authors employ narratives of failure, they reinterpret the nation's foundational moments. At times this serves to challenge official stories and dogmas or to liberate enduring symbols for reinterpretation. Narratives of failure challenge citizens to rethink their nation, their history, and themselves.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts