The preceding study is an exploration of the interdisciplinary and inter-discursive
âdialogueâ between the historical novel, historiography and the philosophy of
history. A rigid distinction between the discourses of literature and historiography
is questioned in the contemporary literary criticism and the contemporary
philosophy of history. In the work of the narrativist philosophers of history like
Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit the narrative features of historiography is
analysed. In contemporary literary criticism the historical novel is not studied in
an autonomous manner. The emphasis in the work of Linda Hutcheon and
Elisabeth Wesseling is on the close ties between historiography, the historical
novel and the philosophy of history.
Developments in the philosophy of history and historiography from the nineteenth
century until the late twentieth century has been related to developments in the
genre of the historical novel in this study. Although the developmental phases of
the philosophy of history does not correlate completely with the developmental
phases of the historical novel, it can be alleged that the Classical historical novel
can be associated with empiricism in nineteenth century historiography and
philosophy of history and that the new historical novel has a close affiliation with
the contemporary philosophy of history. The poststructuralist problematisation of
history has had a big influence on the contemporary philosophy of history, as well
as on the new historical novel.
It appears that the deconstruction of empirical approaches to historiography has a
great deal in common with the contemporary critique on the historical novel in
which confidence in the objective representability of the historical reality is
undermined. Historiography ( like fiction ) is seen as a subjective, ideological and
rhetorical construct which cannot represent the past in a transparent manner. History is viewed as a text which is constantly rewritten from new points of view
and new ideological perspectives. Each attempt to reconstruct a reliable image of
the past is undermined by limitations like the fact that archival material does not
provide a complete picture of the past, the fact that each archival document was
written from an ideological perspective or that the archive is institusionalized.
The idea that history can be viewed as an ideological construct was proposed by
Hutcheon and Wesseling in their work and it was especially this aspect of the
historiographical discourse that was analysed in this study. Foucaultâs association
of discourse with a form of power was applied to the manner in which the
historiographical discourse took part in the colonial discourse in the past, but also
the manner in which a principally male perspective on history was favoured in the
historiographical discourse in the past. With reference to contemporary historical
novels like Eilande ( 2002 ) by Dan Sleigh as well as the novels of Hella Haasse
like Heren van de Thee ( 1992 ), Mevrouw Bentinck of Onverenigbaarheid van
karakter ( 1978 ) and Een gevaarlijke verhouding of Daal-en-Bergse brieven
( 1976 ) the ways in which the new historical novel represents an alternative form
of historiography than formal historiography was investigated. It appears that new
historical novels provides an alternative perspective on history than the Western
and androcentric historiographical tradition. The existing historical record is
supplemented in these novels with the perspective of marginal subjects such as
women, indigenes, or the micro-histories of unimportant historical figures. The
novelist Haasse enters the domain of the historian through the re-valuation of
âapochryphalâ historical sources such as the letter, diary, marriage certificate or
will, whereby an alternative perspective is given on history than in the traditional,
political historiography.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-07042006-092040 |
| Date | 04 July 2006 |
| Creators | Marais, Nina-Marié |
| Contributors | Prof HP van Coller |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-07042006-092040/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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