The use and abuse of history in recent Slovak and Georgian fiction

Donald Rayfield

pp. 114-124

in: Robert B. Pynsent (ed), Modern Slovak prose, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

If the historical novel is to be a literary, not a sub-literary genre, it has to transcend its material. It should not abuse history by processing reality through the minds of invented eye witnesses for the sake of easy digestion; nor should it colour stereotypical characters and plots in pretty period tints. Whether the novel deals with a past recent enough for readers' memories or remote enough to require the invention of a neutral language for dialogue, an historical setting must have as its purpose either the expression of perceptions that historians themselves baulk at or an allegorical presentation of the present which can only be seen when encapsulated in time, that is, science fiction in reverse.