El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las cuestiones relacionadas con la novela histórica como un género cuyo papel en la vida social excede (o puede exceder) las funciones puramente recreativas ...que se le asignan. El artículo comienza con una discusión sobre los problemas de definición y clasificación de la novela, en el contexto de la enorme diversidad de géneros literarios, resultado en parte de las discrepancias metodológicas de investigadores individuales, así como de los supuestos ideológicos que prevalecieron en el contexto histórico de una época dada. Mientras se discute el desarrollo histórico de la novela histórica, se presentan y comentan las deliberaciones de los tres principales teóricos de la novela, Georg Lukács, Ian Watt y Mijaíl Bajtín, sobre la forma, convención y diferenciación interna del género. Luego se discute la escritura histórica, que no sólo tiene un valor documental, sino también el potencial de verificar hechos reconstruidos y procesados del pasado. El artículo concluye con consideraciones sobre el estado actual de la novela histórica y su capacidad para moldear la conciencia histórica y la memoria colectiva de las sociedades.
Totalitarianism, Realism and the Anxiety of History
This essay examines the problem of totalitarian art and totalitarianism by studying the relationship between art, society and history in realism, ...both as a historical literary practice and as an aesthetic doctrine that is till dominant today. Because the understanding of the development of society and art in Nazi Germany tends to dominate the understanding of totalitarianism, scholarly and popular discussions of ideology in totalitarian art has been dominated by a problematization of myth and utopia. However, this paper takes its starting point in Socialist Realism in order to trace the tendency towards a totalizing explanation of the world in terms of social and historical reality in realism. It also discusses the implications of the impact of realism on art in late modernity to further our understanding of the possible return of totalitarianism and fascism today.
Goyas Leben war romanhaft, geradezu filmreif, sein Œuvre vielseitig, erstaunlich politisch und zugleich rätselhaft. Diesen Facettenreichtum spiegelt auch die literarische Funktionalisierung bildender ...Kunst im deutschsprachigen Text und Film über Francisco de Goya.
Angela Hildebrand analysiert in ihrer Monografie die intermediale Dimension von Erzählungen, deren zentraler Gegenstand das Leben und Schaffen des herausragenden bildenden Künstlers ist. Die Bezugnahmen auf Goyas Werk bilden hier kein rein ästhetisches Spiel im sinnfreien Raum. Vielmehr sind die variantenreich, lebendig und anschaulich ausgestalteten Kunstbezüge mehrfach codiert und erfüllen verschiedene Funktionen, die in einer Typologie systematisiert werden. Dabei werden narrative Aspekte, ästhetische und kulturelle Wissensvermittlung, politisch-gesellschaftliche Kommunikation, literarische Topoi, Künstlermythen sowie die (inter-)mediale Selbstreflexion der Erzählungen in den Blick genommen.
In this article I argue that Nigerian author Chinua Achebe ostentatiously co-opted Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming' in the title of his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart to mobilize a modernist gesture in ...order to bookend what is in fact primarily a rehearsal of markers of modernity (realist narration, the structure of the historical novel as defined by Lukács). The latter rehearsal was central to Achebe's claim for the fully-fledged rationalist character of the Igbo polity and his bid to put his society on a par with European modernity. Crucial to this claim for parity, however, was Achebe's countervailing manipulation of residual markers of modernism to force a wedge into the monolith of modernity so as to disable those elements of modernity that disqualified African societies from parity with Europe, as against those elements that were desired as offering parity. By the same token, Achebe's 'countermodernism' also foregrounds other versions of history that resonate with global alter-modernisms and thus posits alternative modernities.
This article explores György Lukács’s reflections on the relationship between the eighteenth-century novel and early modern capitalism. As such, it offers a critical overview of Lukács’s treatment of ...this subject in two major works –
and
– in the process, focusing on the evolution of his approach as a literary critic and contextualising this in relation to his wider theoretical writings. Ultimately, it seeks to demonstrate how the later Lukács’s critical approach differs from contemporary criticism dealing with the same subject, in particular concerning his engagement with the ramifications of his analysis for the present.
The paper analyzes the novel of symbolic titles: Others nests, A gate without a key, Bones and crows, Barren Turkish, White asians, integrated in the roman-fleuve Replacements (2000). The key ...starting point of this confessional chronicle’s chronotope are the decisions in Berlin with tragic consequences for the Bosniaks who were given the burden of “Turkish guilt” and whose name, national and cultural identity, homeland, state and existence were called into question.The novels represent a literary testimony about a period of historical processes and epochal changes in the Balkans, deeply entrenched within the layered and complex contexts of Bosniak culture and history.With authentic artistic speech, the representation and interpretation of historical dramas and traumas, Bašić awakened the identity and constituted the unwritten history of Sanjak-Montenegrin Bosniaks.
This article analyzes the problem of referentiality in the historical novel, based on a comparison between its classic and contemporary forms. The first section addresses the “mixture of history and ...invention” that, following Alessandro Manzoni, was the foremost characteristic of the realist historical novel. The next section discusses how the meta-historical novel of the second half of the 20th century - for example, Disgrace (J. M. Coetzee) and El entenado (Juan José Saer)-eclipsed the problem of referentiality by assuming that the historical novel should operate by its own procedures, and not those of history. The following sections discuss the referential turn in 21st century literary narratives, focusing on three novels: El material humano, by Rodrigo Rey Rosa; K. Relato de uma busca, by Bernardo Kucinski, and Jan Karski, by Yannick Haenel. The article concludes that the inversion of these two poles—from non-referentiality to the predominance of referentiality—is an unexpected facet of the elasticity of the concept (and practice) of fiction, which by denying itself ultimately enriches itself.
Published anonymously in 1814,
is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott which unfolds the story of a young English soldier, Edward Waverley, and his journey to Scotland. Regarded as the first ...historical novel, it contains elements of modernity, heralding a new upcoming era in England. Scott obviously displays the concept of the modern/modernity differently from the perception that writers are conveying today, but he hints at the emergence of a society detached from feudal customs in several aspects through the issue of union between England and Scotland. Highlighting the modern characteristics of Walter Scott’s
, this paper argues that Scott employs elements of modernity in his novel long before their disclosure in literature and politics.
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