Publication details

History, Storytelling, and Narrative Construction of Reality in Graham Swift’s Waterland

Authors

FONIOKOVÁ Zuzana

Year of publication 2017
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Revue Belge de Philologie et de Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Web https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2017_num_95_3_9061
Keywords Historiographic Metafiction; Postmodernism; History and Fiction; Graham Swift; Penelope Lively; Julian Barnes
Description This paper discusses the ways in which Graham Swift's Waterland, like other works of historiographic metafiction, thematizes the problem of historiography as narrative construction of the past guided by certain rules and conventions. Waterland demonstrates how thin the boundary between history and stories can possibly become, while resisting the postmodern temptation of equating historiography with fiction. Comparisons to two other works of historiographic metafiction, Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger and Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot, are made where appropriate to illustrate how the level of present dominates over the actual story of the past in historiographic metafiction and to support the paper’s claim that by questioning the objectivity of history such novels do not aim to erase the boundary between factual and fictional narration.

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