History Meets Fiction (History: Concepts,Theories and Practice) - Softcover

Southgate, Beverley C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408220121 ISBN 13: 9781408220122

Publisher: Routledge, 2009

Synopsis

The relationship between history and fiction has always been contentious and sometimes turbulent, not least because the two have been seen as mutually exclusive opposites. In this thought-provoking and original study, Beverly Southgate investigates the truth behind fiction and the fact behind history and shows that the culmination of 20 years of historical theorising may well be that history meets fiction at a point where the two become indistinguishable.

History Meets Fiction provides a fascinating account of the relationship between history and fiction, a debate fast becoming central to the study of historical theory. It uses extracts and examples from well-known works of fiction to illustrate and reinforce points within the text, and Southgate is an engaging and accessible writer who has the rare ability to present this complex material with clarity.

About this title

About the Author

Reader Emeritus in the History of Ideas, University of Hertfordshire

From the Back Cover

 

‘This is a brilliantly illuminating and provocatively engaged study of those massively porous borderlands between history/fiction and fiction/history.’
Keith Jenkins, University of Chichester

 

‘A wide-ranging and insightful analysis of the richly controversial relationship between history and fiction, Southgate's study demonstrates again and again that historical novelists and dramatists have been far more adept at communicating issues of objectivity, memory, relativism and identity than ivory-tower historical theorists. Highly recommended.’

Jennifer Smyth, University of Warwick

 

 

Is history factual, or just another form of fiction?

Are there distinct boundaries between the two, or just extensive borderlands?

How do novelists represent historians and history?

 

The relationship between history and fiction has always been contentious and sometimes turbulent, not least because the two have traditionally been seen as mutually exclusive opposites.

 

However, new hybrid forms of writing – from historical fiction to docudramas to fictionalised biographies – have led to the blurring of boundaries, and given rise to the claim that history itself is just another form of fiction.

 

In his thought-provoking new book, Beverley Southgate untangles this knotty relationship, setting his discussion in a broad historical and philosophical context. Throughout, Southgate invokes a variety of writers to illuminate his arguments, from Dickens and Proust, through Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier, to such contemporary novelists as Tim O’Brien, Penelope Lively, and Graham Swift.

 

Anyone interested in the many meeting points between history and fiction will find this an engaging, accessible and stimulating read.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408220121
• ISBN 13: 9781408220122
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240