History and the Contemporary Novel

Cowart presents a study of international historical fiction since World War II, with reflections on the affinities between historical and fictional narrative, analysis of the basic modes of historical fiction, and readings of a number of historical novels, including John Barth'sThe Sot-Weed Factor,Marguerite Yourcenar'sMemoirs of Hadrian,Russell Hoban'sRiddley Walker,Margaret Atwood'sThe Handmaid's Tale,Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa'sThe Leopard,D. M. Thomas'sThe White Hotel,William Faulkner'sGo Down, Moses,and Umberto Eco'sThe Name of the Rose. He proposes recognizing four modes of the historical novel: the past as a "distant mirror" of the present, fictions whose authors seek to pinpoint the precise historical moment when the modern age or some prominent feature of it came into existence, fictions whose authors aspire purely or largely to historical verisimilitude, and fictions whose authors reverse history to contemplate utopia and dystopia in the future. Thus, historical fiction can be organized under the rubrics: The Distant Mirror; The Turning Point; The Way It Was; and The Way It Will Be. This fourfold schema and his focus on postwar novels set Cowart's work apart from previous studies, which have not devoted adequate space to the contemporary historical novel. Cowart argues that postwar historical fiction merits more extensive treatment because it is the product of an age unique in the annals of historyan age in which history itself may end.Cowart, David is the author of 'History and the Contemporary Novel' with ISBN 9780809314799 and ISBN 0809314797.