Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Historical fiction'

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1

Pettersson, Petter. "What about historical fiction? : Ways to use historical fiction in an ESL-classroom setting." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-35275.

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Nichols, Ian. "Hybrid texts and historical fiction." Thesis, Curtin University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/2060.

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The Bloodiest Rose is based on the premise that the fair copies of Shakespeare’s plays are discovered, and a production of his previously unknown Henry VII takes place in Sydney. It is an attempt to create a narrative which is factual, entertaining and truthful. The exegesis is an analysis of how fiction is able to form a framework by which the facts may be told differently, but still faithfully, as human truths.
3

Tait, Meg. "Taking sides : Stefan Heym's historical fiction." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.624152.

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4

Hadley, Louisa A. "Rewriting historical narratives in neo-Victorian fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/24661.

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This thesis explores the contemporary form of neo-Victorian fiction in relation to both contemporary and Victorian literature. I argue that neo-Victorian fiction needs to be considered in relation to but as distinct from postmodern literary practices. Although neo-Victorian texts are often considered postmodern, I argue that they should be differentiated from the categories of postmodernism. Whilst interrogating history, often considered a postmodern characteristic, neo-Victorian fiction retains a commitment to the historical specificity of the Victorian era. The interrogation of history undertaken in these texts is intimately connected to Victorian forms of historical narratives. Chapter 1 examines theoretical frameworks of postmodernism, revealing the limitations of such models for neo-Victorian fiction .The subsequent chapters explore the treatment of different historical narratives in these texts. Chapter 2 discusses The French Lieutenant’s Woman and ‘Morpho Eugenia’ and examines the role of meta-narratives in both Victorian and contemporary society, particularly Darwinism and Marxism. This chapter also addresses the grand narrative of literary history in its consideration of the double relationship between Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, illustrated through a detailed examination of endings in both Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction. Chapter 3 explores the issues surrounding genealogical narratives in The Quincunx as well as its engagement with the late Victorian genre of detective fiction. Chapter 4 considers The Biographer’s Tale and The Dark Clue in relation to Victorian forms of biography and developments in photography. This discussion leads on to an examination of the problematic relationship between historical and fictional figures within these texts and the implications it has for their status as historical novels. The final two chapters explore approaches to resurrecting the past within neo-Victorian fiction. Chapter 5 addresses the continued presence of the past, through both spiritualism and literature, in Possession and ‘The Conjugial Angel’. The final chapter discusses the process of ventriloquism, focusing on the incorporation of Victorian and pseudo-Victorian texts in Possession and ‘The Conjugial Angel’. This is extended to address the intertextual relationship of Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction.
5

Kellar, Pinard Katrina. "Settler Feminism in Contemporary Canadian Historical Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39608.

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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.
6

Harris, Katharine. "The neo-historical aesthetic : mediations of historical narrative in post-postmodern fiction." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2018. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/76623/.

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7

Kocela, Christopher. "Fetishism as historical practice in postmodern American fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38213.

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This study contends that postmodern American fiction dramatizes an important shift of philosophical perspective on the fetish in keeping with recent theories of fetishism as a cultural practice. This shift is defined by the refusal to accept the traditional Western condemnation of the fetishist as primitive or perverse, and by the effort to affirm more productive uses for fetishism as a theoretical concept spanning the disciplines of psychoanalysis, Marxian social theory, and anthropology. Analyzing the depiction of fetishistic practices in selected contemporary American novels, the dissertation utilizes fetish theory in order to clarify the unique textual and historiographic features of postmodernist fiction. It also emphasizes the way in which conventional ideas about history and teleology are necessarily challenged by an affirmative orientation toward the fetish. Part One of the dissertation, comprising the first two chapters, traces the lineage of Western thinking about fetishism from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Baudrillard, and Jameson, among others. Recognizing that traditional theories attribute the symbolic power of the fetish to its mystification of historical origins, Part One posits that poststructuralist and postmodernist contributions to the subject enable, but do not develop, an alternative concept of fetishism as a practice with constructive historical potential. Part Two of the study seeks to develop this historical potential with reference to prominent descriptive models of postmodernist fiction, and through close readings of five contemporary American authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Don DeLillo. The four chapters of Part Two each examine the fictional representation of fetishism within a different theoretical framework, focusing on, respectively: temporality and objectivity in postmodern fiction theory; the interrelation between psychoanalytic theory and female fetishism in novels by Pynchon and Acker
8

Davies, Richard Blaine Davies Richard Blaine. "Historical fiction makes American history come to life!" [Boise, Idaho : Boise State University, 2002. http://education.boisestate.edu/bdavies.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2002.
Web site. Master's project includes an explanatory text and CD-ROM entitled: Historical fiction : a web site supporting secondary U.S. history courses of study-Idaho Department of Education. Includes bibliographical references.
9

Redfern, Rachel Yvette. "Layering the March: E. L. Doctorow's Historical Fiction." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2229.

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E.L. Doctorow implements ideas of intertextuality and metafiction in his 2007 novel, The March, which is most notably apparent through its resemblance to the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. Using Michel de Certeau's theory of spatial stories and Linda Hutcheon's of historiographic metafiction, this thesis discusses the layering of Doctorow's The March from the film seen in the character of Pearl from the novel and Scarlett from the film and Selznick's version of the burning of Atlanta and Doctorow's burning of Columbia.
10

Youngs, Suzette. "Literary, visual, and historical understandings intermediate readers respond to historical fiction picture books /." abstract and full text PDF (UNR users only), 2009. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3355609.

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Bavasah, Tessa. "Parodic imagination and resistant form in historical fiction: A study of Ann Harries' manly pursuits." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2007. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=etd&action=viewtitle&id=gen8Srv25Nme4_5657_1242111847.

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In this dissertation, the author examines the historical novel Manly pursuits (1999), by Ann Harries. The novel deals with the late nineteenth century in Oxford, England, and inparticular the year 1899 in Cape Town. The focus of the novel is on Cecil John Rhodes and his entourage, and their obsession with empire, which culminates in the South African war in 1900. Featured characters include Chamberlain, Jameson, Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dodgson, John Ruskin and Olive Schreiner. Harries novel is interpreted as showing resistance to the Victorian society which is the framework which is seen to developed the class and gender-based valued and imperialist thinking of Rhodes and his following. as such the novel is showing resstance to imperialist thinking, the Anglo-Boer war, apartheid and all the resulting legacies for South Africa.

12

Drake, George A. "Historical space in the eighteenth-century novel /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9425.

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Andrews, Katherine Jean. "Not Just the Past, but History: Researcher-Historian Characters in Canadian Postmodern Historical Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31696.

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Since the mid-1980s, the study of Canadian postmodern historical fiction has been dominated by Linda Hutcheon’s “historiographic metafiction.” Emphasizing historiography and textuality, critics of historiographic metafiction have flattened the past to text and image, inadvertently severing its active connection with the present and removing it from historical process. This is problematic for the ideological intentions of the texts in question because it is an awareness of the past/present dialectic that incites awareness that present action can lead to future change. This thesis, therefore, examines three novels that have overwhelmingly been viewed as historiographic metafiction for their inclusion of researcher-historian characters: Findley’s The Wars, Bowering’s Burning Water, and Marlatt’s Ana Historic. By opening up these texts to criticism that acknowledges history as process, I demonstrate that there is no need to limit these novels to this problematic framework and that researcher-historian characters are valuable for more than their foregrounding of historiography.
14

Martin, Patricia L. "Minority protagonists in the young adult historical fiction novel." [Denver, Colo.] : Regis University, 2007. http://165.236.235.140/lib/PMartin2007.pdf.

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15

Dodwell-Groves, Laura. "The seventh bulb : a middle grade historical fiction novel." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/31562.

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In this work of historical fiction, a twelve-year-old girl called Emmetje journeys from the streets of Constantinople to the decks of a smuggling boat and on to the back streets and canals of 17t h century Amsterdam. In her pocket she carries the bulb of a unique blue tulip, and in her hand is a strange treasure map that uncovers the heart of a nation's strange obsession. Emmetje's mother had drawn tulips. Hovering beside the elegant petals she drew butterflies, and on their wings she drew her map. Compelled by curiosity and an adventurous spirit, Emme sets out to discover where her mother's map might lead. Her journey is shared by her three-legged tabby cat and a cabin boy called Sander. Emmetje's journey inevitably becomes one of self-discovery where fathers, mothers and horticulture all play their part. The blue tulip bulb is the silent hero, but the not so silent metaphor for Emmetje's identity. Precious, protected, rich with potential and waiting to bloom.
Arts, Faculty of
Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of
Graduate
16

Tiedemann, Heidi. "After the fact, contemporary feminist fiction and historical trauma." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ63656.pdf.

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King, Nadia-Lisa. "Opening a window into the past with historical fiction." Thesis, King, Nadia-Lisa (2019) Opening a window into the past with historical fiction. Honours thesis, Murdoch University, 2019. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/54724/.

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A fundamental challenge facing historical fiction writers is how to provide a 'real' window into the past. This thesis explores how writers use the literary devices of point of view and setting to create 'true' accounts of historical events. Historical fiction balances the tension between the creation of fiction to entertain and the need for historical accuracy. I argue that by focusing on the minutiae or specific details of setting, readers can be transported to the time and place of the story and a window into the past can be opened. The writer uses point of view to position the telling of the story offering a relationship with the intended reader. The lens, or point of view, used to tell a story, is a mechanism which can bring an historical event into sharper focus for the reader giving them a perspective, albeit a fictionalised one, into history. The literary devices of setting and point of view are explicated in this discussion through my own creative writing resulting in a series of vignettes imaginatively depicting the events leading up to and including the execution of Martha Rendell, the last and only woman hanged at Fremantle Prison in Western Australia.
18

Raghunath, Riyukta. "Alternative realities : counterfactual historical fiction and possible worlds theory." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19154/.

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The primary aim of my thesis is to offer a cognitive-narratological methodology with which to analyse counterfactual historical fiction. Counterfactual historical fiction is a genre that creates fictional worlds whose histories run contrary to the history of the actual world. I argue that Possible Worlds Theory is a suitable methodology with which to analyse this type of fiction because it is an ontologically centred theory that can be used to divide the worlds of a text into its various ontological domains and also explain their relation to the actual world. Ryan (1991) offers the most appropriate Possible Worlds framework with which to analyse any fiction. However, in its current form the theory does not sufficiently address the role of readers in its analysis of fiction. Given the close relationship between the actual world and the counterfactual world created by counterfactual historical fiction, I argue that a model to analyse such texts must go beyond categorising the worlds of texts by also theorising what readers do when they read this type of fiction. For this purpose, in my thesis I refine Ryan's Possible Worlds framework so that it can be used to more effectively analyse counterfactual historical fiction. In particular, I introduce an ontological domain which I am calling RK-worlds or reader knowledge worlds to label the domain that readers use to apprehend the counterfactual world presented by the text. I also offer two cognitive concepts – ontolological superimposition and reciprocal feedback – that support a Possible Worlds analysis of counterfactual historical fiction and model how readers process such fiction. In addition, I redefine counterpart theory, transworld identity, and essential properties to appropriately theorise the way readers make the epistemological link between a character and their corresponding actual world individual. The result is a fully fleshed out Possible Worlds model that addresses the reader's role by focusing on how they cognitively interact with the worlds built by counterfactual historical fiction. Finally, to demonstrate my model's dexterity, I apply it to three texts – Robert Harris' Fatherland (1992), Sarban's The Sound of his Horn (1952), and Stephen Fry's Making History (1996). I conclude that the Possible Worlds model that I have developed is rigorous and can be replicated to analyse all fiction in general and counterfactual historical fiction in particular.
19

Cabrera, Marta Jimena. "Writing civilisation the historical novel in the Colombian national project /." Access electronically, 2004. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20050307.143257/index.html.

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Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) : and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation) /." Connect to this title, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.

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McGuire, Myles T. "Fruitful approaches: Queer Theory and Historical Materialism in contemporary Australian fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2022. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/230862/1/Myles_McGuire_Thesis.pdf.

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"Fruitful approaches: Queer Theory and Historical Materialism in contemporary Australian fiction" investigates the application of Historical Materialist ontologies to gay-themed, contemporary Australian novels, examining these subjects through the lens of totality and reification.
22

Green, Dawn. "Imagining the past [electronic resource] : contemporary Italian women's historical fiction /." Full text available, 2001. http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/ts/theses/greend.pdf.

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Wang, Mei-Chuen. "Narrative, genre and national myth in postmodern Canadian historical fiction." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2010. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54365/.

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This thesis investigates the expansion and continuing proliferation of Canadian historical fiction during the past three decades, and makes a case for reading a number of these novels as postmodern historical fiction. Characterized by the postmodern tendency to problematize history and cross genre boundaries, the novels discussed here are nevertheless rooted in their Canadian context. To establish a theoretical framework, the thesis reviews the reconfiguration of history in contemporary critical theories and its impact on the writing of history and historical fiction, and investigates the debate over Canada's postcoloniality. In the textual analysis, I address the questions raised by the interaction between postmodern problematization of history and local concerns in the selected novels. What narrative strategies are employed to launch an epistemological and ontological questioning of history? Are alternative reconceptualizations of history offered after the problematization? How do these texts achieve genre transgression through narrative devices and what is the purpose of this? What meta-narratives of national history are challenged? What national myths are subverted and dismantled? Are some other myths accidentally reasserted in this deconstructive process? What effects does this historical revisionism or scepticism have on the understanding of Canadian national identity? The focus of the discussion is on the relationships between formal experimentation and thematic concerns and the ways these texts interweave general critiques of history and its representation with specific investigations into the Canadian context. Finally, I propose explanations for the flourishing of contemporary Canadian historical fiction by taking into account both the combined theoretical framework and the complexities and subtleties of the texts under scrutiny. The thesis concludes that the authors of these novels have complicated the postmodern questioning of history at a variety of levels and made that questioning accommodate the novelists' concern with Canadian specificities.
24

Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) ; and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.

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Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the
25

Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.

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Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.
26

Westerman, Molly Cooper Pamela. "Narrating historians crises of historical authority in twentieth-century British fiction /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1792.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008.
Title from electronic title page (viewed Sep. 16, 2008). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature." Discipline: English; Department/School: English.
27

Randall, James P. "Posthumous temporality and encrypted historical time in fiction and life writing." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2018. http://research.gold.ac.uk/23276/.

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This thesis considers ways of reading posthumousness in narrative in various theoretical and literary constellations by focusing on temporality and historical time. Defining posthumousness in terms of a narrative perspective adopted after the death of a character or the narrator, I consider how writers reanimate historical characters, adopt imagined posthumous perspectives and reconstruct historical memory. I combine approaches to temporality by Paul Ricoeur and Mark Currie, incorporating elements of psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theory including Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s writing on crypts, Ned Lukacher’s analysis of primal scenes and prosopopoeia, and Jacques Derrida’s writing on the archive. Each chapter considers how historical time is imagined within narratives concerned with posthumousness. Chapter 1 considers how historical time is given a place within the posthumous narrative of Iain Sinclair and Rachel Lichtenstein’s Rodinsky’s Room. Chapters 2 and 3 develop ideas of historical time and the posthumous in relation to Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva and Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book. Chapter 4 compares Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet and José Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Chapter 5 analyzes posthumousness in Bruno Schulz’s stories, and how these are reimagined by Jonathan Safran Foer (Tree of Codes), David Grossman (See Under: Love) and Cynthia Ozick (The Messiah of Stockholm). I focus on these novels’ engagement with posthumousness, including how primal elements of memory and historical time are given new presences. I consider how this approach to fiction and historical time gives the past a new life in narrative, giving time for what Schulz describes in his story ‘The Age of Genius’: ‘events that have no place of their own in time; events that have occurred too late, after the whole of time has been distributed, divided and allotted; events that have been left ... hanging in the air, homeless and errant.’
28

Niemeyer, Lisa. "Writing German historical fiction in an age of change, 1848-1871." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609458.

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Meyers, Erika Ann. "Characters of class : poverty and historical alienation in Dermot Bolger's fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/26042.

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This thesis provides a Marxist analysis of the effect of class on historical alienation in Dermot Bolger’s fiction. Therefore, this study examines the influence of Irish history on Bolger’s choice of content, form and technique in order to argue that historical interpretation and literary technique are mediated through class stratifications. Chapter One investigates how The Journey Home challenges received ideas of what constitutes ‘reality’ which has, consequently, led to elements of critical dismissal used to maintain antiquated gaps, silences and notions of ‘reality’. In Chapter Two I look at A Second Life in order to examine how historical ruptures cannot just be seen in the nonlinear structure of Bolger’s novels, but can also be used to expose the silences and gaps that comprise the previously censored personal histories of Bolger’s characters. In Chapter Three I identify structural confines such as definitions, family roles and nationalism as instigating factors that lead to the alienation of those who do not conform to prescribed frameworks and are therefore oppressed by them. I further investigate how oppression also provides the pressure to rupture the linear trajectory of such approved frameworks and produce the nonlinear structure that can be recognised in The Family on Paradise Pier.
30

Margaret, Scanlon. "Popular histories : a study of historical non-fiction books for children." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2008. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020570/.

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Hildreth-Blue, Cynthia. "Enlivening California's sixth grade history/social sciences curriculum with historical fiction." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/562.

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Mitchell, Anne. "Approaches to history in text and image in England, c. 1830-70." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.239429.

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Stephenson, William John. "Form, parody and history in 'The French lieutenant's woman' and 'A maggot' by John Fowles, and 'To the ends of the Earth: a sea trilogy' by William Golding." Thesis, University of Leeds, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249288.

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Keith-Slack, Peter B. "Baptized in Blood." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1390.

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Merlin, Bailey. "Sentinel." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2017. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/496.

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Devastated by the mysterious death of her guardians, Elizabeth Davenport finds herself thrust into a new world that proves to be scintillating and dangerous. Can she trust those who claim to be her friends? Or will her trust lead her into trouble? When a mysterious letter presents itself and proves that her guardians might have been more than they ever let on, Elizabeth must gather her courage and pursue the truth, whatever the cost.
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Lake, Wendy M. "Aspects of Ireland in children's fiction : an historical outline and analysis of children's fiction set in Ireland (1850-1986)." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.253857.

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May, Chad T. "Trauma and the historical imagination in British and American fiction, 1814-1986 /." view abstract or download file of text, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3181110.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-199). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Wakeling, Louise Kathering School of English UNSW. "Theorising creative processes in the writing of the neo-historical fiction watermarks." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 1998. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/17228.

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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.
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Anderson, Helen Victoria. "Historical and detective fiction in Italy 1950-2006 : Calvino, Malerba and Mancinelli." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.539933.

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40

Tyson, A. F. "Dehistoricised Histories: The Cultural Significance of Recent Popular New Zealand Historical Fiction." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Department of English, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1568.

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The recent popularity of mass-market New Zealand historical fiction coincides with the increasing vocality of particular cultural discourses that resist the influence of revisionist histories on dominant understandings of national identity. This thesis examines how the depiction of colonial history in four such novels legitimates and sustains hegemonic understandings of New Zealand as culturally European. The novels analysed are The Denniston Rose (2003) by Jenny Pattrick, Tamar (2002) by Deborah Challinor, The Cost of Courage (2003) by Carol Thomas, and The Love Apple (2005) by Coral Atkinson. The cultural context in which these books have been produced is situated within a history of nationalist discourses and Raymond Williams’s theorisation of hegemonic cultural processes is employed to explain how contemporary national culture continues to rely on colonial principles that sustain settler cultural dominance. Close analysis of the temporal and geographical settings of the novels reveals how the portrayal of history in these novels evades colonial conquest and the Māori cultural presence. A comparison of the historical and contemporary cultural significance of the spatial settings employed in these novels – the wilderness, pastoral, and colonial urban spaces – highlights how these settings tacitly communicate that New Zealand is culturally European. Nevertheless, the problematic cultural legacies of colonialism still haunt these novels. The way in which the narratives resolve these issues reveals that hegemonic New Zealand identity is reliant on a dehistoricised view of settlement and therefore perpetually vulnerable to the intrusion of Māori memory.
41

Ratzer, Jane Alexander. "Development of Mexica, a historical fiction screenplay about the conquest of Mexico." Thesis, University of Colorado at Denver, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1588206.

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The primary objectives of this thesis are to research the Conquest of Mexico and to integrate research to expand upon Mexica, a 125 page historical fiction screenplay that was started in 2008 about the 16th century invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. Through quantifying and writing commentary on the revisions to reflect the integration of new research, the enhanced work is accompanied by a critical introduction essay that simultaneously serves as a literature review to determine how sources contributed to the dramatization. The critical introduction is in Spanish, the research was conducted in Spanish and English, and Mexica is in English, to better reach the target, mainstream American audience. The essay addresses schools of thought and theoretical frameworks on the conquest and how they have been accepted, rejected, dramatized and/or incorporated in the screenplay. By analyzing chronicles, literature, film and television relevant to the conquest, narrating experiences and creative license are demonstrated. The essay exhibits a historiographical review by examining myths, misconceptions and consensus on several themes relevant to this era of initial contact in the New World. The critical introduction of Mexica explains how the enhanced script better integrates the indigenous perspective through analysis of a variety of sources, with a non Euro-centric emphasis, to reflect compelling and multidimensional characters in the historical fiction genre.

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Hodgkinson, Amanda. "Spilt milk : memory, real life, and knowing the past in historical fiction." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2018. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34587/.

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This PhD by Publication comprises two of my novels, 22 Britannia Road and Spilt Milk, accompanied by a reflective and critical exegesis which investigates the process and context of writing my internationally published historical fiction novel Spilt Milk. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theoretical approaches to memory and narrative as a means to consider the borderlines between lived life and fiction, I consider the ways in which historical fiction can represent versions of real life which contain human truths and emotions. With this in mind, I argue that my novel writing (and reading) practice stem from the shared potential in what I term ‘creative memory.’ This site of potentiality is where worldliness and collaborative knowledge between writer and reader in response to the text exists, illustrating my own belief in the imagination as a place of creative communality. In examining this, I establish my own contribution to the ways in which memory and the imagination impact on the practice of creative writing, and reading fiction. Reflecting on my creative practices offers original and wider ways of understanding how literature represents, or even is, ‘real life,’ and thus has an important role in our lives today.
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Bretherick, Diana. "The Devil's Daughters : criminology and the female offender in historical crime fiction." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/415840/.

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This PhD thesis consists of two sections, each supported by a bibliography. The critical commentary reflects on the research and writing process I embarked upon for my doctoral novel and how I drew upon criminological theory and research to inform it. Also examined is how contemporary writers of crime fiction might best use the resources offered by criminological research. I chose to write a historical rather than contemporary novel about criminology to explore the influence that historical ideas about crime might have on the way we perceive it today; to examine, challenge and critique dominant nineteenth-century theories about the female offender and their present day legacy, specifically by creating strong female characters including plausible female villains and basing my characterization on the history and theory of criminology; and to look at the beginnings of the modern ‘scientific’ approach to crime, as typified by one of my central real life characters, the ‘father’ of modern criminology, Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). My intention was to use Lombroso’s second major study, La Donna Deliquente (or Criminal Woman) with a view to considering how criminology can be used in writing crime fiction. Drawing on relevant examples from both criminological literature and fiction, the critical commentary begins by discussing Lombroso’s ideas together with the scientific and cultural context of those ideas and their legacy and their influence on my writing of the novel. Lombroso’s work and that of his contemporaries is then further explored through the representations of the female offender in nineteenth-century fiction and historical crime fiction set in the period that I drew on when researching the novel. The writing of The Devil’s Daughters is then examined, focusing on the roles of its female characters and how criminological theories informed my own creative process. I conclude by discussing examples of criminological theories that have featured in contemporary crime fiction and making suggestions of how they might be drawn on in the future, thus enriching both forms. The Devil’s Daughters, my doctoral novel, set in Turin in 1888, is a historical crime thriller that describes an investigation into a series of murders of young women. I introduce the work of Cesare Lombroso and his assistant Salvatore Ottolenghi (also a character in the novel), and make extensive use of Lombroso’s work in framing the story including quotations at the beginning of each chapter. As well as a young Scottish hero, there are several strong female characters who play dominant roles in the narrative, either as detectives or perpetrators thus challenging late nineteenth century attitudes towards female offenders.
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Kelly, Kristine N. "Constructing an alternative language: Historical revision in the fiction of Bessie Head." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18269.

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Through consideration of Bessie Head's fiction and essays, the paper that follows investigates Head's use of fiction to challenge the hegemony of South African history, a history that fails to represent black South Africans except as "objects of abuse and exploitation" (Head, A Woman Alone 66). The absence of a subject position in history for black South Africans betokens a need for critical reevaluation of the structures and language of that history. History should document and create a people's identity; however, Head contends that South African historical discourse has obliterated the historical identity of black South Africans. The imaginative freedom that fiction allows provides Head with a radical means for reinscribing an alternative historical identity. Through four interrelated sections, then, this paper describes and evaluates the way in which Head's works challenge existing historical discourse by working through literature to establish an alternative set of historical structures. The Botswana land, offers Head, a space for experimentation with writing styles that evade reproducing an account of historical oppression and also for the practical construction of a new world. This construction includes agricultural reform that would give power over the forces of production to the workers of the land and which would in turn provide these workers with both economic and spiritual independence. The novels, however, display an incongruous duality wherein the construction of Head's new world is interfered with by the dominating voice of South African history. Hence, the subject and the problem of the novels becomes a conflict for the authority of history. Head's efforts towards constructing a new world also seek to implement women as a primary labor force in both material and creative production, thereby further challenging a history that has rendered women as sexual commodities. The Collector of Treasures offers a culmination of this conflict. Here, Head offers a strategy of narrative fragmentation interrelated with a dialogic, multi-voiced discourse that dismantles the single-voiced structure of a history determined by the politics of repression. Fiction offers a freedom of structure and thought unavailable to the historian; therefore fiction transgresses the boundaries created by a repressive history and is able to establish an original and self-sustaining historical world.
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Crossland, R. Bert (Rodney Bert). "A Content Analysis of Children's Historical Fiction Written about World War II." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279151/.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution of children's historical fiction dealing with World War II in order to describe the changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. Two questions were asked in the study: (1) Has the characterization of protagonists portrayed in historical fiction about World War H evolved since 1943? and (2) Have the accounts of the events of World War H portrayed in historical fiction evolved since 1943? Content analysis was used as the method of collecting data. The sample consisted of 86 novels written from 1943 to 1993. Upon completing the reading and coding, the researcher discussed the categories and questions posed. As part of analysis, the discussion of the novels in each period was accompanied with an overview of trends in children's literature and events affecting society. The analysis led to the following conclusions: 1. Authors were impacted by changes in the social and political climate, as evidenced by the changes in the gender of the protagonists, an increase of violence, and the inclusion of women. 2. Novels written during the 1980s and 1990s were written with a stronger American perspective. 3. At the time that an increase of violence was seen in American society, descriptions of World War II events and protagonists' actions became more violent and more graphic. 4. Though the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war with Japan, an inadequacy still exists in the number of novels that provide readers with details related to the atomic bombs. Though much of World War II was fought in the Pacific Rim, a deficiency remains in the number of novels set in Pacific Rim countries. Recommendations for further research include performing a study that examines other genres, analyzing the changes observed in the portrayal of protagonists. A study could be conducted to analyze the author's ethnicity and relationship to the war and determine if differences exist.
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Herbert, Elanna, and n/a. "Hannah�s Place: a neo historical fiction (Exegesis component of a creative doctoral thesis in Communication)." University of Canberra. Communication Media & Culture Studies, 2005. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20070122.150626.

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The creative component of my doctoral thesis articulates narratives of female experience in Colonial Australia. The work re-contextualises and re-narrativises accounts of events which occurred in particular women�s lives, and which were reported in nineteenth century newspapers. The female characters within my novel are illiterate and from the lower classes. Unlike middle-class women who wrote letters and kept journals, women such as these did not and could not leave us their stories. The newspaper accounts in which their stories initially appeared reflected patriarchal (and) class ideologies, and represented the women as the �other�. However, it is by these same textual artefacts that we come to know of their existence. The multi-layered novel I have written juxtaposes archival pre-texts (or intertexts) against fictional re-narrativisations of the same events. One reason for the use of this style is in order to challenge the past positioning of silenced women. My female characters� first textual iterations, those documents which now form our archival records, were written from a position of hegemonic patriarchy. Their first textual iteration were the record of female existence recorded by others. The original voices of the fictionalised female characters of my novel are heard as an absence and the intertext, as well as the fiction, now stands as a trace of what once existed as women�s lived, performative experience. My contention is that by making use of concepts such as historiographic metafiction, transworld identities, and sideshadowing; along with narrative structures such as juxtaposition, collage and the use of intertext and footnotes, a richer, multidimensional and non-linear view of female colonial experience can be achieved. And it will be one which departs from that hegemonically imposed by patriarchy. It is the reader who becomes the meaning maker of �truth� within historical narration. My novel sits within the theoretical framework of postmodern literature as a variant on a new form of the genre that has been termed �historical fiction�. However, it departs from traditional historical fiction in that it foregrounds not only an imagined fictional past world created when the novel is read, but also the actual archival documents, the pieces of text from the past which in other instances and perhaps put together to form a larger whole, might be used to make traditional history. These pieces of text were the initial finds from the historical research undertaken for my novel. These fragments of text are used within the work as intertextual elements which frame, narratively interrupt, add to or act as footnotes and in turn, are themselves framed by my female characters� self narrated stories. These introduced textual elements, here foregrounded, are those things most often hidden from view within the mimetic and hermeneutic worlds of traditional historical fiction. It is also with these intertextual elements that the fictional women engage in dialogue. At the same time, my transworld characters� existence as fiction are reinforced by their existence as �objects� (of narration) within the archival texts. Both the archival texts and the fiction are now seen as having the potential to be unreliable. My thesis suggests that in seeking to gain a clearer understanding of these events and the narrative of these particular marginalised colonial women�s lives, a new way of engaging with history and writing historical fiction is called for. I have undertaken this through creative fiction which makes use of concepts such as transworld identity, as defined by Umberto Eco and also by Brian McHale, historiographic metafiction, as defined by Linda Hutcheon and the concept of sideshadowing which, as suggested by Gary Saul Morson and Michael Andr� Bernstein, opens a space for multiple historical narratives. The novel plays with the idea of both historical facts and historical fiction. By giving textual equality to the two the border between what can be considered as historical fact and historical fiction becomes blurred. This is one way in which a type of textual agency can be brought to those silenced groups from Australia�s past. By juxtaposing parts of the initial textual account of these events alongside, or footnoted below, the fiction which originated from them, I create a female narrative of �new writing� through which parts of the old texts, voiced from a male perspective, can still be read. The resulting, multi-layered narrative becomes a collage of text, voice and meaning thus enacting Mikhail Bakhtin�s idea of heteroglossia. A reading of my novel insists upon questioning the truthfulness or degree of reliability of past textual facts as accurate historic records of real women�s life events. It is this which is at the core of my novel�an historiographic metafictional challenging by the fictional voices of female transworld identities of what had been written as an historical, legitimate account of the past. This self-reflexive style of historical fiction makes for a better construct of a multi-dimensional, non-linear view of female colonial experience.
47

Arnold, Abigail. "Memento Mori and Other Stories." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2017. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2293.

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48

McCracken, David E. "The Great Plains trilogy. Book one, These God-forsaken lands. Part one (of three), Wayward horse." Virtual Press, 2008. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1391232.

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This is the first of three parts in the first of three planned novels, collectively called The Great Plains Trilogy, which takes place between 1841 and 1845. Set against such historical events as the Battle of Plum Creek and the Texas Council House Fight, Part One follows Lock (a.k.a. Aidan Plainfield) in 1841, whose wife and daughter were killed by Comanches during the Victoria raid of 1840. Since the raid, Lock has left his life behind, surviving alone in the Great Plains. One morning he discovers that Comanches have stolen his horse, and he sets off to recover it. Along the way, he meets Mr. Pendleton, an Englishman who has been injured by Comanches, and Raymond Wales, a thief who has been mysteriously left to hang in the middle of the woods. Mr. Pendleton and Raymond Wales, each of whom have their own mysterious motivations, join Lock on his journey.
Department of English
49

Bowman, Christopher M. "Gallery of the Past: Writing Historical Fiction with 19th Century Photography in Canada and Australia." Thesis, Griffith University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/365910.

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This thesis, consisting of a novel and dissertation, explores the writing of historical fiction, and the use of photography as research in visualising the several settings that the characters inhabit. As the novel is set in the late 19th century, the conventions of Victorian-era photography came to the forefront of the research. The story sees two fictional brothers leave their home on Vancouver Island in Canada, each traveling alone, and each with a different weight on his heart. They find themselves in towns with very real, and very documented, histories, and this is where my research into photography began. Joseph Richard, the younger brother, finds work in the town of Yale, on the Fraser River in British Columbia during the early days of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Yale was a boomtown and major depot during railway construction, and there are many photographs from the 1880s to chronicle its buildings and denizens, its remote and wild surroundings, its place in history.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Arts, Education and Law
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Carvalho, Alyssa May. "The novel as cultural and historical archive: an examination of Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat (2006)." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1224.

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This research engages with a contemporary theoretical debate in the literary field, namely the ability of fictional texts to contribute to archival records. Contemporary research in archival discourse suggests that there are many intersections between fiction and the archive. Using Hamilton and others’ seminal text Refiguring the Archive (2002) and Pasco’s “Literature as Historical Archive” (2004) as point of departure, this dissertation offers an analysis of the South African English translation of Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat (2004, translated 2006). In both form and function, the novel is viewed as a simulation of an archive. In Agaat, Van Niekerk has compiled a fictional archive of two indigenous South African cultures through her portrayal of the two main characters: Afrikaner culture during apartheid as embedded in the focalization of Milla de Wet and remnants of Khoi and/or San culture as emerge from the fictionalised subjectivity of her coloured housekeeper-nurse, Agaat. Through a conceptual and theoretical exploration of archival discourse, I argue that literary texts, such as Van Niekerk’s novel, have the potential to refigure (or creatively redefine) the archive and to enhance its scope and relevance, especially as South Africa undergoes transformation.

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