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國立政治大學英國語文學系博士班博士論文 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系博士班博士論文. 指導教授:藍亭 Advisor: Professor Timothy Lane. “HIR’D OR COERC’D”: THE CREATION. 治 政 OF NARRATIVE HISTORICAL大 WRITING 立 ‧ 國. 學. 收編或壓迫:敘事式歷史書寫之形塑研究. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 研究生:潘大為. i Un. 撰. Name: David Pendery 中華民國九十九年六月 June 2010. v.

(2) 2. “HIR’D OR COERC’D”: THE CREATION OF NARRATIVE HISTORICAL WRITING. A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 er. io. sit. y. Nat. n. a l In Partial Fulfillment i v n Ch U i e h n gfor c the Degree of of the Requirements Doctor of Philosophy. By David Pendery June 2010.

(3) 3. Dedications. For my mother, who taught me so much.. 獻給我的母親,她教了我許多。. And in memory of my father: “Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.”. 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v.

(4) 4. Acknowledgements. Thanks to many friends and family members in Taiwan and the United States, who have taught me what quality intellectual pursuit is all about. Thanks Dave. Thanks to my wife, Hope, who is an inspiration. Our beloved tabby, Loudmouth, offered her own brand of moral support. Special thanks to professors Hayden White of Stanford University and Marie-Laure Ryan of the University of Colorado, Boulder, for assistance and advice during the composition of this work.. 治 政 大 Timothy Lane, Thanks to the members of my dissertation committee, professors 立Pin-chia Feng and Joe Eaton. They provided help and Chen Chao-ming, Peter Zarrow, ‧ 國. tance during my studies in Taiwan.. 學. support along the way. Chen Chao-ming, particularly, has provided much help and assis-. ‧. Thanks to the several analysts, historians and novelists, who answered my queries. y. Nat. about their experiences and thoughts on this topic, providing valuable new data that I. sit. could include in my writing. Thanks especially to Don DeLillo, for his handwritten reply,. al. er. io. and Professor James McPherson, who forwarded me one of his articles.. n. iv n C Thanks to my good friend and classmate, h e n Charles i U Ph.D., who provided help at hChen, c g just the right points along the way. And wheresoever they may be, thanks to those muses who incited me into something like an inspired, imaginative madness that was so rewarding during much of the writing of this work: The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. -Ralph Waldo EmersonDavid Pendery, 潘大為 Taipei, 2010.

(5) 5. “HIR’D OR COERC’D”: THE CREATION OF NARRATIVE HISTORICAL WRITING. Table of Contents. Dedications. 政 治 大. 立. 3 4. Chinese Abstract. 9. ‧ 國. 學. Acknowledgements English Abstract. 11. ‧ sit. y. Nat. “Hir’d or Coerc’d”: The Creation of Narrative. n. al. er. io. Historical Writing • Introduction. • Fredric Jameson. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 13 38. • Paul Ricoeur. 47. • Hayden White. 55. • Conclusion. 72. Lived Experience, Historical Consciousness and Narrative: A Combinatory Aesthetics Ethic • Introduction. 81. • The Aesthetics Ethic: Aesthetic Contours in Lived. 86. Experience.

(6) 6 • The Aesthetics Ethic: A Social Ethic. 92. • The Aesthetics Ethic and Histories of Sensibilities. 115. • The Aesthetics Ethic: A Narrative Ethic. 121. • Conclusion. 138. Narrative Consciousness and Historical Experience: Living Links • Introduction. 142. • Historical Theory and Narrative Consciousness. 145. • Literary Analysis and Narrative Consciousness. 149. • Narrative Consciousness. 156. •. 172. 學. ‧ 國. •. 政 治 大 Subjectivity and Objectivity: Theories of Coherence 立 The Importance of Thought, Redux. • Conclusion. 185 187. ‧. Fictionalized History, Historicized Fiction: Two. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. Peas in a Pod • Introduction. Ch. • Crossing Boundaries. engchi. i Un. v. 192 195. • Burgeoning Matrices of Fictionalized History. 200. • What is History?. 205. • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours: Imagination. 210. • History and Myth. 213. • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours:. 226. Point of View • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours:. 240. Fictionalization • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours: Becoming. 267.

(7) 7 • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours:. 273. Heteroglossia, Intertextuality • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours:. 278. Contingency, Metaphor, Modality, Chaos • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours: Temporality. 303. • Historical Writing, Aesthetic Contours: Rhetoric. 310. Temples, Towers, Shifting Sands: Truth in Historical Writing. 政 治 大. • Introduction. 立. • Greater Truths. 338 349. ‧ 國. 學. • Into the Fray: Parameters of Truth in Historical Writing. 362 364. 2. Niall Ferguson. 371. ‧. 1. John Dewey, Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas. Nat. n. al. • Past into Present. Ch. engchi. sit er. io. 4. Nelson Goodman. y. 3. Marie-Laure Ryan. i Un. v. 373 387 391. • Fictional Truth and Belief: A Personal View. 398. • Fictional Belief. 402. • Fictional Truth. 406. 1.. Actual Truth. 410. 2.. Possible Truth. 411. 3.. Assumed Truth. 413. • Procedures Obtaining Truth in Fiction. 418.

(8) 8. The Creation of Narrative Historical Writing: Concluding Thoughts and Summaries • Concluding Thoughts. 424. • Concluding Summaries. 437. End notes. 452. Bibliography. 499. Author CV. 522. 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v.

(9) 9. 國立政治大學英國語文學系博士班 博士論文提要. 論文名稱: 收編或壓迫:敘事式歷史書寫之形塑研究. 指導教授:藍亭. 研究生:潘大為(David Pendery). 政 治 大. 論文提要內容:. 立. ‧ 國. 學. 本論文將檢視非虛構歷史記錄(史料)與虛構歷史書寫(歷史小說),全方位 分析歷史意識與書寫間的關係。在考察大量非虛構歷史記錄與虛構歷史文本間. ‧. 的關聯與從屬性後,試圖梳理出隱晦於兩者間之互動聯繫。上述聯繫奠基於認. y. sit. io. er. 述。. Nat. 識論、認知學、美學、語言學與本體論,而這些特性皆將於論文中詳細分析論. 在深入介紹三位重要的歷史/文學理論家—詹明信、保羅‧呂格爾以及海登‧. n. al. 懷特—. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 並且比較其作品之異同後,本人將於第二章提出本論文的主要發現之一,即作 品中存在著本人稱為「美學倫理」的、一種不斷形塑的思維。本人認為,美學 倫理是一種強大且具約束力的複合物,它連結並影響著非虛構與虛構歷史的書 寫, 而書寫則涵納了道德/倫理與美學特性之實踐。美學倫理乃是動態、高度審慎 的領域,其中包含個人與群體的歷史經驗,並且盤根錯節於深層美學與意識的 大架構之下。在此經驗中,歷史首先實際發生,接著由歷史學家載入史料,其 後由歷史小說家書寫成為故事。 在此部份,我將於論文中引述一些重要的分析家,其中最具影響力者要算是約 翰‧杜威以及丹尼爾‧維克伯格,他們的「感知歷史」理論將會是重要論述因 子之一。在本文理論中另一重要元素乃是人類意識敘事基礎對於虛構與非虛構.

(10) 10. 歷史敘事的理解與組織模式。而這將再次點明實際的意識經驗(歷史)是如何 先發生,之後由歷史學家書寫(意識)歷史,接著再由小說家撰寫故事。 第三章根據上述論證,透過敘述意識概念的細節回顧,以及意識如何建構歷史 敘述之脈絡,進一步闡述理論。本研究較為獨特之處,在於對主體性、客體性 與相互主體性之間,整合運作聯繫性之分析。第四章將詳細剖析各種特定的美 學因子,以及這些因子在理論架構中,歷史意識兼敘述之「發展中網絡」裡所 扮演的角色。此分析之重要元素乃是本人對於生活與文學中表達模式之檢視, 在過去此類概念並未被充分陳述。 第五章包含真實與歷史書寫之分析。根據本人研究,仍有許多關於歷史敘述中 真相之觀察與「建構」方面的細節,過去尚未有較完備之研究。透過比較異同. 政 治 大. ,並整合當代多位優秀分析家與理論家之理論,本人將描繪出關於歷史真相之 完整且獨特的理論。此外,本章亦將概略提出一個與論文其他分析搭配,且獨. 立. 立建構的真相理論。在結論部分,將針對上述眾多概念,提出其整體重要性之. ‧ 國. 學. 論述,以及這些概念對於人類歷史意識與書寫之衝擊。. ‧. 關鍵字:歷史、歷史意識、歷史學家、歷史小說家、史料、歷史小說化、史實. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 、美學、敘述意識、道德、倫理. Ch. engchi. i Un. v.

(11) 11. English Abstract This paper is an expansive analysis of historical consciousness and writing, examining the principle genres of non-fiction history (historiography) and fictionalized history (historical novels). The analysis examines a host of relevancies and affiliations that cross among fictional and non-fictional historical writing, and seeks to highlight underlying vincula linking these two narrative forms. These linkages stem from epistemological, cognitive, aesthetic, experiential, linguistic and ontological qualities, all which will be examined and related in detail. The work begins with a thorough preamble that compares, contrasts and critiques the works of three major historical/literary theorists—Fredric Jameson, Paul Ricoeur. 政 治 大 theses and themes, to be examined throughout the study. A principal finding of this 立 study in Chapter Two is the existence of a conditioning conception I call the “aesthet-. and Hayden White—and applies their theory to my own ideas, I introduce my main. ‧ 國. 學. ics ethic.” The aesthetics ethic is I posit a strong, binding amalgamation that links and influences these two genres, comprised of transacting moral/ethical and aesthetic fea-. ‧. tures. The aesthetic ethic is a dynamic, densely deliberative field comprising individ-. y. Nat. ual and community historical experience, embedded within profoundly aesthetic and. sit. conscious contexts, in which history is first lived, and historical writing by historians. al. er. io. and historical novelists is then composed. I refer to a number of important analysts in. n. iv n C whose theory of “histories of sensibilities” h e n giscanhimportant i U factor. An additional imthis section of the work, perhaps most importantly John Dewey and Daniel Wickberg, portant element of my theory is that the narrative basis of human consciousness maps. onto historical narratives, fictional and non-fictional. This again refers to how conscious lived experience (history) is first lived, and then (conscious) historical writing by historians and novelists is then composed. I follow this examination, in Chapter Three, with a detailed review of conceptions of narrative consciousness, and how this consciousness maps onto historical narrative, proper. A unique element of this study is my analysis of a given combinatory transaction linking subjectivity, objectivity and intersubjectivity. Chapter Four is a lengthy analysis of specific aesthetic factors, and their roles in a “burgeoning matrix” of historical consciousness-cum-narrative within my overall theory. An important component of this analysis is my examination of modality in life and letters, and important conception that has not been adequately.

(12) 12 addressed in the past. Chapter Five includes an analysis of truth in historical writing—and we find that there are intricate details about the apprehension and “construction” of truth in historical narrative that have not been adequately described before. I delineate, compare, contrast and combine ideas from several premier analysts and theorists in this area, reaching what I hope is a coherent and unique theory of historical truth. In this chapter, additionally, I provide a small sketch of an independently created theory of truth that is in accord with the rest of the analysis. The work concludes with final summaries and thoughts about the overall importance of narrative historical writing, and their impact on human historical consciousness and writing. Keywords: History, historical consciousness, historians, historical novelists, his-. 政 治 大. toriography, historical novelization, historical truth, aesthetics, narrative consciousness, morality, ethics.. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v.

(13) 13. Chapter One. “HIR’D OR COERC’D”: THE CREATION OF NARRATIVE HISTORICAL WRITING. 立. 政 治 大. ‧ 國. 學. History is hir’d or coerc’d, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power […]. She needs rather to be. Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat Int rod uc tio n. ‧. tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters.. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. ALTHOUGH THE ABOVE QUOTE from Thomas Pynchon, with its suspicious. fictionalists “tending” what we know should be wholly factual accounts of lived historical experience, is more than a little anti-intuitive (or worse, combatively contrarian), I will in this analysis of historiography and historical novels align myself with its sentiments, and show how such a tending, a veritable confabulation, is in fact evident, and how fictional and non-fictional varieties of historical writing are transacting modes in a single paradigm that takes in a continuum of properties existen-.

(14) 14 tial/vital,. phenomenological/intentional,. experiential/intersubjective,. hermeneu-. tic/epistemological, historical/temporal, narrative/aesthetic, ontological/cognitive/conscientious, and communicative/linguistic. The formational historical discourses that emerge out of this fruitful interplay become, as we will see, something like two sides of the same coin, and ultimately function as foils in a vast historical colloquy.1 The central conception I will posit in terms of historical writing in these respects, which I will consider from a number of different perspectives and in light of a number of different disciplines, is that the textual and corporeal actualities of narrative, consciousness, and history are tightly braided into a veritable synthesis, by way of narrative’s. 政 治 大. emergence from, continuity with, incorporation within, and similar structure to his-. 立. tory/lived experience. By examining the filaments of this plaiting, and how the varied. ‧ 國. 學. factors interface with and condition one another, we will learn more about how and. ‧. why histories are written the way they are, and more about their consequence in the. sit. y. Nat. human historical conversation. In a word, my aim is to show how fictional and non-. io. al. er. fictional histories map onto each other, with touches of the imagined and constructed alongside the remembered, the experienced and the witnessed; the empiri-. n. iv n C cal/researched functioning with thehdiscursive/composed; e n g c h i U and all of these matters and. partitions becoming something like a gestalt of our temporal/narrative experience, with its looks backward into memory, onto present experience, and forward into the anticipated future. We will find that the historian and the novelist have been “presented with different but overlapping opportunities,” as William Styron (1925-2006) once wrote ([2] 445). To prove all of the above, I will create encompassing, organic, synthetic explanatory and theoretical maps and models that include examinations of aesthetic factors, compositional technique, historically conditioned consciousness, historical and literary theory, and parameters of truth and epistemology. As evidence.

(15) 15 of the above I will examine a plethora of examples from historiography, historical source materials and fictional historical writing. It's a big job ahead, a long journey, but I look forward to the fascinating parameters we will examine.2 “But stop right there,” the skeptics will intone. “Any claim that the fantastic fundaments of fiction could somehow seep into the stuff of history, the verity of lived experience, and any insinuation that this richly salubrious herbage could be tilled into or cultivated out of the weedy patches of fiction, is nothing less than bonkers, outand-out sacrilege.” Indeed, here we should note that historical fiction is inevitably seen as a troublemaker in a discussion like this, and many people, “scientific histori-. 政 治 大. ans” particularly, dismiss any possibility of this genre being seriously considered. 立. alongside historiography in terms of historicality, truthfulness, actuality, and the like.. ‧ 國. 學. Though I will consider this view, granting it authority, we will in the end find that it is. ‧. simply not entirely true, and that historical fictions are not some sorts of counterfeit. sit. y. Nat. cut-outs portraying whimsical (and of course false) views onto what is not in fact the. io. al. er. past, but are credible, newly imagined representations of the past that was experienced, authentically effecting enlarged historical apprehension through a rich fund of. n. iv n C psychic and aesthetic relevancies and h eaffiliations n g c h ithatUcross over into historiography, proper. My study will in a word seek to highlight underlying vincula linking fictional and non-fictional breeds of historical narrative. These rhizomatic linkages run deep and wide, and ultimately constitute something of a nutritive system delivering the same sustenance to both historiography and historical novels. In a word, my study encompasses not only letters, but also life, and my examination will be based on an assumption that life—historical experience/consciousness, incident, meaning and outcome—is assimilated into letters—fictional and non-fictional historical narrative— and then back again. “[W]e are in history as we are in the world,” writes David Carr.

(16) 16 (Charles Howard Candler professor of philosophy, Emory University), and this “serves as the horizon and background for our everyday experience” (Time, Narrative and History 4). From a stance like this I will argue that a given modal historical narrative is “read up” out of aestheticized conscious experience, composed into narrative by historians and historical novelists, read out by readers, and then replaced within a healthy reciprocal, contextual circle of human experience (history) and communicative endeavor (narrative). The above preface suggests relevant questions pertaining to my subjects. I quote two reviewers of the first draft of my study, who asked “What exact contribu-. 政 治 大. tion does historical fiction make to ‘history’?” and “What is gained in terms of his-. 立. torical knowledge and understanding from historical novels?” My interlocutors, rea-. ‧ 國. 學. sonably, are demanding details and complete explanations, asking how fictionalized. ‧. history can become one “provisional guiding thread” in the tapestry of historical. sit. y. Nat. comprehension, with the overall fabric comprising “the successive assessments, inter-. io. er. pretations and criticisms” leading to our “final judgment as to what the story really was, or as to what actually happened” (Gallie 50).3 My aim throughout this study will. al. n. iv n C U be to provide clarity in preciselyhthese Johan Huizinga (1872e nrespects. g c h i Historian 1945) once wrote that “only by continually recognizing that possibilities are unlimited can the historian do justice to the fullness of life” (292)—and I think we need to open our minds to just such unlimited possibilities in terms of narrative historical fiction as it provides historical meaning, interpretation and understanding while ultimately “doing the justice” that Huizinga sought. At one high level our topics become almost amusingly correspondent, with any “breach” separating these two genres a good bit narrower than what we might think. I have already referred to “the same sustenance in the same ways” being deliv-.

(17) 17 ered to the two genres under consideration. Historiography and historical novelization without question each have their own unique qualities, their own representational strategies and techniques (there are differences). And yet they are also the same, meticulously accessing the same source historical documentation, recreating history in similar narrative/composed ways, and reaching out to readers with varied interpretations of history with the same ends in mind (conveying what was and what might have been, each which have roles to play in historical writing, as we will see). When they take their places within networks of intersubjective communicative praxes, they transact into and out of one another, contribute to, compel and interrogate one another, and. 政 治 大. ultimately create richer, more complete and better historical apprehension and under-. 立. standing. Is one admissible as historical evidence—truthful, accurate, impartial, “sci-. ‧ 國. 學. entific”—and the other not, merely fabrications and phantasms? I think not, and feel. ‧. that historical novelization, just as historiography, is one orb in the galaxy of histori-. sit. y. Nat. cal redescriptions and corresponding/competing historical vocabularies, vying for. io. al. er. prominence and acceptance. To turn to Peter Munz (1921-2006), “The most one can do is to check one story against another story. One can compare the two and any no-. n. iv n C U a comparison. Our historical tion of ‘truth’ one can form musthbe e related n g c toh isuch knowledge, in short, is of historical knowledge—not of what actually happened” (205). Ultimately, I think that some of the principal perceived differences separating historiography and historical fiction are more a function of readers’ receipt of the works than genuinely alien elemental differences at work. In the end—and I return here to a point that I will return to again—I hope that we will find a transaction at work across these varied points, such that historical fiction may be recognized as something of a different order from the same menu, often comprised of different ingredients but at bottom providing the same sort of nourishment. Hayden White (pro-.

(18) 18 fessor emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz) put it this way: “[H]istory—the real world as it evolves in time—is made sense of in the same way that the poet or novelist tries to make sense of it, i.e., by endowing what originally appeared to be problematical and mysterious with the aspect of a recognizable because it is familiar, form. It does not matter whether the world is conceived to be real or only imagined; the matter of making sense of it is the same.” (“The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” 98). To coin another metaphor, Paul Ricoeur once commented on the “deep kinship” of historiography and fictional narrative—but remember that kinship no doubt comprises a wealth of difference, and every family has its black sheep....4. 政 治 大. As for these observed similarities, we will at times find that, as I have noted,. 立. some historical novelists perform jobs essentially identical to those of historians, con-. ‧ 國. 學. veying historical truth in empirical and deeply-researched ways that usually do no. ‧. disservice to the historical record. And as well, the motivations of the writers of these. sit. y. Nat. two genres are often largely similar, with both wishing to present something like an. io. al. er. unadorned array of historical facts (there is a certain aesthetic and epistemological power to simple lists of historical data, which are found in both fictional and non-. n. iv n C fictional historical narratives, a point will examine h eI n g c h i Uin chapter 4). From this basis a bit of expansiveness enters into the picture, with not only a good bit of creative license at work, but larger (often much larger) excavations of meaning from the historical record taking place. We may in sum, and at the highest level, say that all of these similarities emerge out of one very large common denominator in addition to those I have described thus far—the community of historical writers and readers and the plethora of receptions of historical works, evidence and experience, which I broadly denominate an aesthetics ethic (the subject of chapters 2 and 4 of this work). To continue, and also emerging out of the aesthetics ethic, a principal reason for the close.

(19) 19 associations I am discussing is the narrative structure common to fictional and nonfictional history writing. M. C. Lemon offers a lightning-fast definition of narrative when he writes “When we offer someone a story, a narrative account of ‘what happened’ […] we cannot but structure this discourse in terms of a sequence of events […] done intentionally by us, for our purposes […]. Our structuring is meaningful; it manifests the reasons we have in doing it; it constitutes a rationale” (43). Note here the meaning by definition manifested in temporal narrative, an interpretation that will underlie much of this analysis (and addressed particularly in chapter 2). In fact, for Lemon, narrative is such an essential discursive structure in terms of the transmission. 政 治 大. and apprehension of history that “if we were incapable of narrative that entire aspect. 立. of reality constituted by events would be beyond our awareness” (72).. ‧ 國. 學. We may examine two brief examples that I think illustrate the above consid-. ‧. erations. Consider this the opening salvo in my analysis. The following examples are. sit. y. Nat. very simple, but I think if pondered they indicate the fascinating interplay of generic. io. al. er. similarities and differences that we are considering. The time is late summer 1864, as the Union and Abraham Lincoln’s prospects are at last looking brighter. Secretary of. n. iv n C U State William Seward, a rock-solidhLincoln the impact of the latest e n gloyalist, c h i considers. Union battlefield successes on the hated Democratic party’s nomination convention in Chicago. James M. McPherson, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History, emeritus, Princeton University, writes in his great Battle Cry of Freedom:. In retrospect the victory at Mobile Bay suddenly took on new importance, as the first blow of a lethal one-two punch. “Sherman and Farragut,” exulted Secretary of State Seward, “have knocked the bottom out of the Chicago platform.” (775)5.

(20) 20 Now note historical novelist Gore Vidal, in his Lincoln: A Novel, working with and conveying the same data, creates a novelistic/historiographic transaction, “raising the consciousness” and illuminating the apprehension of Seward, who is seen in a Cabinet meeting with Lincoln when presidential secretary John Hay (an actual historical figure who wrote a famed account of his experience working with Lincoln during the Civil War) bursts into the room and hands Lincoln a letter from failed presidential candidate John Frémont:. Seward did his best to guess the contents of the letter. […] If it had any-. 政 治 大. thing to do with the military, he would have given it to [Secretary of War]. 立. Stanton or [Secretary of the Navy] Welles first. So the message was political.. ‧ 國. 學. But Sherman and Farragut had knocked the bottom out of the Chicago nomination convention. (578-579). ‧ y. Nat. sit. György Lukács (1885-1971) referred to factors like these in fictional historical writ-. n. al. er. io. ing when he wrote of necessity of “the derivation of the individuality of characters. Ch. i Un. v. from the historical peculiarity of their age” (19), while Frank Ankersmit, professor of. engchi. intellectual history and historical theory at the University of Groningen, enjoined historians to incline their ears toward fiction for echoes of the past and a unmediated access to prior lived experience, such that “they will feel directly addressed by the past and that this may then have its resonance in their whole being” (Sublime Historical Experience 282). In sum, these are aesthetic/conscious and then epistemological and even ontological thrusts that are seen in both genres, though perhaps more prominently in historical fiction, with novelists making use of a broader palette on which to paint their historical canvasses. In a word, the aesthetic tools of the fictionalist are not the contrivances of the liar—the usual claim exposited to dismiss the value of fiction.

(21) 21 in terms of historical truth and reality—but a once-removed techne, such that the tools of the fictionalist—narrative, recreated dialog, figurative language, characterization, subjunctive incident, synthetic denouements, and the like—reproduce (or produce) historical truth—a full-bodied Ricoeur-esque “seeing as”—and, I will posit, validity claims comprised “not only of descriptions that make claims about the world (the data), but also of statements that interpret or generalize these claims” (Ryan 823). These are all expansive topics, and I will leave them here, and take them up later in this chapter and elsewhere in this work. To continue this discussion of how novels “do their thing” and convey valu-. 政 治 大. able historical information, the narrative structure of novels possesses a unique ag-. 立. glomerative quality, an unsurpassed density and, generally speaking (and in the hands. ‧ 國. 學. of the best novelists), a finely-honed narrativity (to cut to the chase) that opens doors. ‧. onto historicality. History, as Frank Ankersmit has written, “comes to us in wholes, in. sit. y. Nat. totalities, and this is how we primarily experience both the past itself and what it has. io. al. er. left us” (Sublime Historical Experience 119). I think that the narrative of historical novels may map onto just such a conception, ultimately yielding awareness of “the. n. iv n C U ‘Lincoln’: An Exchange” nature of fact as observed in fiction” h e(Gore n gVidal, c h i“Vidal’s para. 67) and a wealth of historical perspectives, attitudes, enlargements and dispensations. In short, “it may happen [that] the reader of a novel [...] will feel directly addressed by the past and that this may then have its resonance in their whole being” (Ankersmit Sublime Historical Experience 282).6 Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007) once. wrote that “Fiction opens up a horizon of possibilities in relation to what is; to this extent it remains linked to realities” (The Fictive and Imaginary 230), and also that “The reality represented in the text is not meant to represent reality; it is a pointer to something that is not, although its function is to make that something conceivable”.

(22) 22 (The Fictive and Imaginary 13). My hope is that in terms of our study of history, we will be able to explore how fiction opens windows onto “what is” (that is, “what was”) and prior “realities.” As well, we will find that represented fictional historical realities will “point” to that well known, poignant, absent past—“what is not”—and by way of fictionalization, make much of this past “conceivable” in both its pastness, and in its relation to our current and anticipated realities. Admittedly, historiography often does something like this, but again it is my opinion that fiction does it differently, and often more vigorously. Iser adds that “The new denotation generated by the canceling of denotation [in fiction, by way of as-if construction] can now take on. 政 治 大. presence by way of the newly released implications, which suggest the possible con-. 立. tours of the hitherto uncharted territory” (The Fictive and Imaginary 249). This com-. ‧ 國. 學. ment again opens up the possibility of appealingly wide vistas to be realized in fic-. ‧. tional historical works as they reveal “newly released implications” and traverse. io. al. er. in their re-represented pasts.7. sit. y. Nat. across “uncharted territory” (no doubt, we should emphasize that it is to be charted). Ultimately, by way of the facts and facets introduced here, my hope is that that. n. iv n C we will see how fiction allows us h toe “stand face ito U n g c h face with reality itself in an en-. counter with reality that is direct and immediate since it is no longer mediated by the categories we normally rely on for making sense of the world” (Sublime Historical Experience 285 emphasis in original). Ankersmit called this the “right relationship” to the past, and though I would not claim that non-fiction history lacks proper relations to the past, the point is that fiction can do its own thing, do it differently, do it well, and provide the avenues to understanding and apprehension we are discussing. Fiction, in a word, provides just the direct sense of historical apprehension referred to by Ankersmit, and though it is itself admittedly a mediating factor, it is nothing like.

(23) 23 those mediators “we normally rely on for making sense of” our historical experience (they comprising “the protective shield” that normally “mediates between us and the world” as Ankersmit wrote just above).8 In sum, I will approach the various compositional approaches and interpretive methodologies of these two genres and disciplines as imbricated, at times similar, at times divergent, but with both affording that Ricoeur-esque “seeing as” of the past. Perhaps, in the end truth is best imagined, particularly if it is firmly grounded in the disagreed-as well as agreed-upon facts” (Gore Vidal, “Vidal’s ‘Lincoln’: An Exchange” para. 68, emphasis added).9 I will now explain in some detail three of the major theses of this work, and. 政 治 大. then look at several of the principal works I will analyze (I will continue to add other. 立. proposals to be presented in various chapters, outlining this entire work, following. ‧ 國. 學. these discussions, below). The aesthetics ethic I will construct in chapter 2 is a dap-. ‧. pled experiential ground, a dynamic, densely cerebral experiential field embedded. sit. y. Nat. within profoundly aesthetic conscious contexts comprising individual and community. io. al. er. histories lived in an environmentality studded with manifold elements of subjectivity, objectivity and intersubjectivity, imagination and artfulness, intentionality and actu-. n. iv n C alization, and, perhaps most importantly, and communih e n enunciation/circumscription gchi U cation in historical narrative. Understand this conception in terms of the etymologies of these words, with aesthetic from the Greek aisthētikos, “of sense perception,” “to perceive,” and ethic from the Greek ēthos, “character,” “custom,” related to words meaning “comrade,” “kinship,” and “family.”10 These two interacting conceptions will create, I think, a platform that will effectively allow us to traverse a continuum of historical apprehension and consciousness, and to see how these are effected in historical writing. Jerzy Topolski (1928-1998) nicely captured the essence of this rich interplay when he wrote that “Historical narratives […] invoke an aesthetic sense in.

(24) 24 virtue of which their identity is formed. […T]he aesthetic dimension is crucial in the formation of historical wholes” (198). Frank Kermode also captured some of the philosophical, perhaps conceptual, flavor of this proposal when he wrote: “Since ethics is the relation between [the] fictional giant and the human animal, ethical solutions are aesthetic; we are concerned with fictions of relation” (160). Historical literature, fictional and non-fictional, is the key manifestation of these varied factors. The aesthetics ethic will require a lengthy and detailed theoretical explanation and defense, with the final picture a veritable arras web (to borrow from Hayden White) of historical narrative and related elements and experiences.. 政 治 大. An important point within the aesthetics ethic will be my examination of the. 立. work of Daniel Wickberg, associate professor of Historical Studies/History of Ideas at. ‧ 國. 學. the University of Texas at Dallas. Wickberg’s histories of sensibilities in fascinating. ‧. ways comprise an aesthetic complex, “modes of perception and feeling, the terms and. sit. y. Nat. forms in which objects were conceived, experienced, and represented in the past”. io. al. er. (662), and “ideas, emotions, beliefs, values” (670). These conceptions, comprising,. n. constituting and constructing swathes of aestheticized historical experience, I think. i n C U transact well with my own positionshand e nideas. gchi. v. My claim that human consciousness, lived historical experience and historical narrative are virtually one is an—probably the—essential scaffolding of my position, and will be taken up in chapter 3.11 In terms of historically mediated human consciousness and narrative, most important to note is the understanding that human consciousness has a profound and encompassing narrative essence and construction, as I have referred to. Many theorists, scientists and analysts examining consciousness have made this position clear, and as Fireman, McVay and Flanagan write, “Given that personal narrative and self-representation exist as human experience, they are.

(25) 25 therefore central to a conception and examination of human consciousness” (5). As I have exposited, the central point I will pursue in terms of historical writing in this respect is the correlative relationship of narrative, consciousness, and history. To borrow from consciousness researcher David Chalmers, I am in effect arguing for a principal of structural coherence.12 In more detail, and in addition to the narrative structure of conscious lived experience, note the following points and ideas about human consciousness that I will examine: 1) How subjectivity, intersubjectivity and objectivity, in a combinatory compote, are processed through narrative practice in human consciousness, and how this impacts historical experience and narrative; 2). 政 治 大. How consciousness is foremost a synthesizing operation, and how this relates to how. 立. writers of history themselves integrate ideas into ordered plots, and the associated rep-. ‧ 國. 學. resentation of characters and events in temporal/causal sequences with significant out-. ‧. comes; 3) The Collingwood-esque idea of “history as thought,” and how this can be. sit. y. Nat. connected back to conscious processes and historical narrative. For Collingwood. io. al. er. (1889-1943) the corridors of human consciousness and understanding were intimately linked with historical experience and for him, famously, thoughtful processes and his-. n. iv n C U as part of the fundamentory are no less than “an idea whichhevery e n [person] g c h i possesses tal endowment of mind” (“Inaugural” 166, emphasis added). John Tosh, professor of history, Roehampton University, meanwhile, similarly refers to historical interpretation and understanding as a straightforward “discourse within a contradictory intellectual milieu” (134). These comments indicate how thought, which can be seen as a high-level manifestation of human consciousness, is at the very foundation of historical understanding and apprehension (these ideas will also be connected to Daniel Wickberg’s histories of sensibilities); 4) How historical and to some extent literary theory, with their impacts on historical narrative, have frequently emerged out of con-.

(26) 26 ceptions and attributes of conscious lived experience (this has not been acknowledged much less understood by theorists to date); 5) How the conceptions of protention and retention along a temporal continuum in conscious experience can be seen at work in narrative consciousness and in turn narrated history. In sum we might view this expansive conscious/referential field as a global workspace, with its processes and functions managed and employed in order to integrate perception, enable adaptation, and provide information to a self system, with all of this helping us understand our place in history and the origins and architectonics of historical narrative.13 To return to aesthetic elements, the elements I will examine include multi-. 政 治 大. temporal emplotment, that richly mediated synthesis and variously conditioned dialec-. 立. tic in which “stories are told, life is lived” (Ricoeur, A Ricoeur Reader 430). To truly. ‧ 國. 學. understand the dynamics of plot, one must probe into its complex elements, and by. ‧. doing so we will find that fictional and non-fictional emplotment is suffused with a. sit. y. Nat. number of aesthetic qualities, which I will examine in extensive detail in chapter 4 of. io. al. er. this work. These qualities include: 1) imagination as a founding element of both historical novelization and historiography; 2) substantial focus on characters and charac-. n. iv n C U and intersubjective; these terization with varying points of view, h esubjective, n g c h iobjective characterizations and points of view can extend across narrators and characters in emplotted narrative, writers of historical narrative, and reading audiences; 3) a given fic-. tive quality and fictionalizing techniques that condition fictional and also nonfictional historical writing; 4) an effort toward individual and community becoming or bildungsroman (which may impact characterization, temporality, point of view, and the like); 5) a vast heterglossia and intertextuality, with different voices dialogically at play— “the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers,” as David Lodge has written (The Art of Fiction 97); 6) a.

(27) 27 thoroughgoing modality, contingency and indeterminacy (with a nod toward a view of chaos in historical experience and apprehension); 7) linguistically, a semantic/syntactic richness and density that includes the skilled use of symbolism, metaphor, irony and other elevated uses of language + meaning, with these constituents organized into unifying/overarching and meaningful themes with an impact on characters and reading audiences; 8) dense temporality, employing diachronic and/or synchronic time frames, sometimes disrupted (such as by way of fast-forwarding or attenuation, or in instances of what Gérard Genette defined as prolepsis and analepsis), but virtually always with something like identifiable beginnings, middles and ends. 政 治 大. (Exposition-Development-Climax-Denouement-Resolution); 9) a rhetorical thrust that. 立. extends across the aesthetic, moral, argumentative and historical; and finally, 10). ‧ 國. 學. fluid conceptions of truth in narrative and historical experience. Granted, different. ‧. lists of aesthetic elements, created by different analysts will vary—but I will forge. sit. y. Nat. ahead with the list I have outlined here, with the hope that we will see in a number of. io. al. er. different ways and in a number of different contexts how these attributes transact in human historical apprehension, historiography and historical fiction.. n. iv n C I should turn here to clarifyhsome i U of the two genres I will be e n ofg cthehcontours. examining, analyzing, comparing and contrasting. Although I think at the ground level we know what is being referred to when we talk about historiography or historical novels, at a high level, varying approaches, understandings and methodologies can differ significantly. Historiography is probably easiest to begin with, for there is a general understanding of this genre as applying to history as history—the recalled and related actual historical personages and events from our past.14 This writing is typically empirical, analytical (even “scientific”), almost wholly realistic—with this approach sporting a long pedigree that extends far back into ages past, and was particu-.

(28) 28 larly highlighted by the famed German historian and educator Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), and his stoutly defended effort to tell history wie es eigentlich gewesen. But there is a twist inside this seemingly pared-down and arch-realistic world, for even in the most “positivist” historical writing, there are usually significant dashes of creative conjecture and interpretation, descriptive breadth about the causes and meaning of events and trends, and the acts and thoughts of historical agents (even von Ranke recognized this, I believe). Additionally, the relations of historical events and agents to prior and subsequent events and personages (extending into the yet-to-beexperienced future) is subject to a good measure of creative and interpretive license.. 政 治 大. James M. McPherson has written that he employed a flexible narrative composition in. 立. his Battle Cry of Freedom in order to accommodate and convey the variegated con-. ‧ 國. 學. tingency of lived experience, allowing him to “do justice to this dynamism, this com-. ‧. plex relationship of cause and effect, this intensity of experience” (ix). Few historical. sit. y. Nat. writers would discount this idea, but von Ranke’s approach would seem to limit it,. io. al. er. and to be sure there are historians and analysts who shy from over-weighting a term like contingency, and related aesthetic ideas about lurking différance in historical. n. iv n C writing, open-ended ideas about truth, h e nfreeg capplication h i U of “pastiche,” some sort of. “meta-foregrounding” of the writer, oppressive anxiety of influence, etc. There are, in a word, those more stern observers who seek to contain historical writing and analysis strictly to actual periods and agents, with exacting adherence to the written and reliquary record, the past “as it is actually found.” Obviously, and as just noted, a key area in light of these observations and this debate is the extent to which non-fiction historians may utilize what would normally be seen as fictional techniques and/or approaches in their writing. For most historians an understanding like this is unavoidable given the changes in literary theory and subsequent application of this theory into.

(29) 29 historical writing over the last 50 years or so—but few would ever claim that they actually fictionalize in their writing, and the farthest they would probably go is to admit that, yes, they do employ narrative structure and understanding in their writings, and that there is a small allowance for more expansive creativity—but no more. We will see slightly more liberal understandings like this—though still essentially ensconced in empirical history—in some of the works I will examine, such as The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan D. Spence, an experiment in historical narrative with strong literary underpinnings (1978); History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, by Paul Cohen, an experiment in multiple interpretations of. 政 治 大. history (1997); and Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland, by Norman Davies, a. 立. unique present-to-past telling of history (1984, 1986). The principal historiographic. ‧ 國. 學. work in my analysis will be McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), which has. ‧. justly earned a reputation as an essentially positivist history, conveyed in a model nar-. sit. y. Nat. rative account. In addition to historiography, proper, I will refer to various other. io. al. er. sources, including Slavery in the United States: a narrative of the life and adventures of Charles Ball, a black man, by Charles Ball, a memoir written by a former slave in. n. iv n C 1836; and the actual confession ofhNat i Ufrom the rebel slave by one of e nTurner, g c htaken the lawyers in his trial in 1831. I will refer to a number of other historiographies and non-fiction works as well, such as journalism accounts, diaries, and the like. In sum though all of these works count as “history,” they are of different varieties and voices, with some examples simply empirical history, some more focused on the use of narrative in history writing, some a bit more experimental, some personal, and also additional archival resources. I am hoping this variety will serve us well, and I will extensively compare and contrast these works with fictional works in my analysis..

(30) 30 Similar to historiography, we have a broad understanding of the historical novel that is not often disputed—a fictional work shaped around actual historical incident and personages, with this historical actuality providing these novels their main thematic and topical thrusts, as well as dictating their portrayal of action and characters. Many an historical novelist has made it abundantly clear that they have striven to adhere exactly to the historical facts in almost all essential ways—“During the narrative that follows I have rarely departed from the known facts” wrote William Styron of The Confessions of Nat Turner ([1] Author’s Note, emphasis in original, no page number), and “All of the principal characters really existed, and they said and did. 政 治 大. pretty much what I have them saying and doing” wrote Gore Vidal of Lincoln: A. 立. Novel (Afterword).15 We see here, I think, another of those similarities linking histori-. ‧ 國. 學. cal novelists and historiographers. I will sketch additional details of other fictional. ‧. works I will examine just.. sit. y. Nat. But the above is only half true. For the freedom to imagine upward historical. io. al. er. events and personages, filling in the gaps of all that is not fully (or even partially) known about these historical data, is broadly exploited by some novelists (but then,. n. iv n C such dearths of understanding arehalso e n“exploited” g c h i Uby historians). At the extreme,. some fictional works upend history in ways that are so broadly peculiar, conjectural or truly deviant from the actual past that they are not likely not be called historical novels at all. The work of Thomas Pynchon is a good example, for although his works are historical to the extreme (I learned an awful lot about Germany’s activities in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Pynchon’s V.), they tend to be expansive to the point of psychedelic in their explosively creative and imaginative construction, and extend far beyond any strict historicality. Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon comes pretty close to being an historical novel in the strict sense—but the appearance.

(31) 31 of the “learn'd English dog” making sophisticated political, cultural, historical and philosophical observations discounts it (then again, it was the very historical Abigail Adams, wife of President John, who found Paris to be a delightful “city of entertainments” in which she saw “‘a learned pig, dancing dogs, and a little hare that beats a drum’” [McCullough 343]). Other works are more restrained but still do not fully meet my requirements, such as Ian McEwan’s Atonement (with its masterful mid-text description of the Dunkirk evacuation in WWII), Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days (with its refashioning of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York city), Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (which no doubt offers some of the most realistic and. 政 治 大. important interpretations of WWII experience ever written), or Don DeLillo’s Un-. 立. derworld (with its delightful reconstruction of Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard round. ‧ 國. 學. the world” in 1951). These works offer wonderful historical descriptions and are in. ‧. their ways steeped in historicality, but they are all in sum a bit too “fictional,” and. sit. y. Nat. don’t have the full-bodied focus on specific historical incident and agency that the. io. al. er. works I will study do (though I will in fact examine the passage from McEwan referred to above, in chapter 5 of this work). The historical novels that I examine are. n. iv n C U areas and events in history. just that, novels fully and specifically h efocused h iknown n g c on They “stick to the facts” in many ways, largely adhering to the historical record. Though of course they exploit narrative freedom in re-imagining the past, they are clear in their focus and in what they describe, and we largely recognize the history. that is portrayed, and the impact that results from: the experiences of a soldier on the western front in WWI; everyday country life and the shocking slave rebellion in upland Virginia in the early 19th century; the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War; or the cold-blooded murder of a farm family in Kansas in 1959. I refer to Hayden White, who said in a recent interview “I have never felt that the important thing is.

(32) 32 to find out the truth about the past. Rather, it is to find out what is real rather than what is true” (“The Aim of Interpretation” 65). (I admit that some observers have found Professor White’s words puzzling and possibly even spurious; I will address these concerns in my examination of historical truth in chapter 5, such that I think we will find White’s words are in fact revealing). In sum I would count fiction as one of the principal effectors or excavators that, alongside non-fiction historiography, elucidates the remembered, the historical traces and leavings, the communicative artifacts and just “what is real” in lived historical experience (that which was experienced providing a concomitant psychological/ontological connection/association and birds-eye. 政 治 大. views onto interpreted meaning, context, intimation, significance, etc., all of which,. 立. we should be careful to note, is as well conditioned by truthful apprehension).. ‧ 國. 學. To continue, the historical novels I will study are an eclectic lot, each possess-. ‧. ing distinctive attributes. and this I think will be an advantage, challenging our inter-. y. Nat. pretations going forward, forcing us to rethink historical writing in unique and crea-. al. er. io. sit. tive ways. All four works are 20th century works, and I will explain the reasons for this later in this chapter. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. n. iv n C (1929) is a fictionalized eyewitnesshaccount i U of historical experience and e n g and c hmemoir apprehension in World War I (the memoir is a unique but valid form of history, at once a “source historical material” and an independent creative construction). Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965) often comes off as empirical history, a “true crime” account—but it is in fact very much a fictionalized work of historical incident, which of course Capote called a “non-fiction novel.” William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1966) is an historical novel masterpiece, meticulously researched and interpreted in true historian fashion—but the difficulty is that there is a scarcity of source materials on which to draw about the historical events portrayed. This is, how-.

(33) 33 ever, anything but unusual, and we will examine how Styron reconstructed his history within given constraints, in the end broadly re-imagining history in full-bodied ways. Finally, Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (1974) is a brilliant historical novel in the classic sense, very different from Styron’s in that there is a wealth of source materials on which to draw about the Battle of Gettysburg. The above in sum sketches most of the principal themes, arguments and works to be studied in this paper. David Lodge captures with aesthetic élan this panoply of ideas, and, with my additions, folds together historical experience and narrative in a neat aesthetic/experiential integument when he writes that literature “creates fictional. 政 治 大. models of what it is like to be a human being, [historically] moving through time and. 立. space. It captures the density of [consciously] experienced [historical] events by its. ‧ 國. 學. rhetoric, and it shows the connectedness of [historical] events through the devices of. ‧. [narrated] plot” (14). Lodge here refers specifically to literature, which we may, in. sit. y. Nat. terms of narrative, liken to historiography without too much compunction.. io. al. er. The hackles of our aforementioned skeptics, however, are probably on the rise again—for the visceral understanding of the character of history as a wholly empiri-. n. iv n C U reconstructed by historians is cal, positivist and identifiable stuff h that e isnrecovered g c h i and veritably entrenched in much academic (and for that matter popular) apprehension and epistemology. We have assiduously pursued nothing less than an austere and scientific model of historical research and composition for some 200 years or more, with the aim of finding the bare-bones truth about previously lived experience. Writers of fictions, these doubters will say, hardly do this. As noted, this view carries some weight—but it is something of the skeleton of this topic, and more is necessary to construct a network of attached tissues, so that we can fully perceive the integrated body of history—its form, figure, features, fettle and from there, its manifold func-.

(34) 34 tions. In terms of this more-multifarious anatomy, I think few observers would disagree with the propositions I have emphasized—that is, that the lineaments of narrative endow historical writing with much of their essential actualization, and imbue them with bountiful detail and ellipses of complexity that “scientific history” just does not yield. Historical novelist Jeff Shaara (son of Michael Shaara, author of The Killer Angels) put it this way: “I know that there are some (academics mostly) who are biased against novels in general, feeling that a novelist has too much license to avoid facts, and thus, fiction should be discounted completely. I don’t agree at all. Anyone who reads my work will gain a pretty specific knowledge of the actual events (I hope). 政 治 大. […], and it adds to my own responsibility to ‘get it right’” (personal communication. 立. with author, 29 August 2009).. ‧ 國. 學. As I have noted, the central elements of our topic have been studied for many. ‧. years, and this is all something of a “new old idea.”16 In the main section of this chap-. sit. y. Nat. ter, following this introduction, I will examine what I perceive to be the strengths and. io. al. er. weaknesses of three of the most brilliant scholars in this area: Fredric Jameson, Paul Ricoeur and Hayden White. Jameson, Ricoeur and White have revealed in fascinating. n. iv n C U and deeply influential ways how, as noted, something very h ePynchon h i waggishly n g conly close to fictionalization shapes non-fiction history. My examination of the work of Jameson, Ricoeur and White will provide the necessary foundation going forward. I will at times critique these three thinkers (call me brash, even foolhardy), in order to prize open some of the key conceptions that play leading roles in the study of narrative and history, and in these openings I will daub in some of the plaster of my own ideas with the aim of showing how fictionalized history and historiography often (even always) enjoy a correlative relationship. After my discussion of these three thinkers, I will conclude this chapter with an expanded examination of the ideas I.

(35) 35 have introduced here, and continue to expound upon my central theses. In the remainder of the work I will continue along this winding path, examining the various topics I have introduced. The organization of my study is as follows. The reader will find that these chapters often interact, forecast and refer back to one another, which I hope makes my analysis and writing more coherent, synthetic and complete. As historian Saul Friedländer has written, “No single conceptual framework can encompass the diverse and converging strands” of a necessarily “integrative and integrated” history (xvi, xv). I could add the thoughts of Jeroen Van Bouwel and Erik Weberl, Ghent University,. 政 治 大. Belgium, who wrote recently of the value of an ecumenical explanatory pluralism in. 立. social sciences, which respects and utilizes an interesting and ranging variety of pos-. ‧ 國. 學. sible explicatory schema. For Van Bouwel and Weberl, “A consequence of our plural-. ‧. ism is that the ideal explanatory text for a social or historical phenomenon (that is, the. sit. y. Nat. comprehensive account of this phenomenon) will contain explanations of various. io. al. er. sorts” (182) I have described chapter 1, and the remainder of this study will include: Chapter 2: Chapter 2 has been in introduced in some detail above. Here I will fash-. n. iv n C ion my aesthetics ethic, examining h eboth n gaesthetic c h i Uand the ethical conceptions in what I posit is a broad intersubjective environmentality in which human beings live, and historical writers function. Stemming from this, there will be a look at the strictures and impacts on and in historical writing imposed by community, with exam-. ples of community ethics and morality conveyed in historical writing. Following this is an examination of Daniel Wickberg’s histories of sensibilities. Finally, I will examine one particular narrative aesthetic factor that will be important as we move ahead: the idea of narrative as an explanatory paradigm..

(36) 36 Chapter 3: Chapter 3 has also been introduced above. I posit the emergence of identical constituent epistemological and ontological formations across individual and community consciousness, and historical experience proper. The key connective tissue in this knowing consciousness is narrative, and the conception of narrative consciousness will be examined in extensive detail. This overall experience and apprehension is in expansive ways then presented and represented in historical narrative, as I will examine. Chapter 4: Chapter 4 has been introduced above. In it I will analyze the aesthetic conceptions listed above in relation to historical writings and other ideas in my the-. 政 治 大. sis, including consciousness. My aim will be to link these factors across a (con-. 立. scious) human “aesthetic gaze” taking in and interpreting experience, and up into. ‧ 國. 學. composed historical narrative. Chapter 4 contains by far the bulk of the examples of. ‧. historiography and fiction I will use in support of my arguments.. sit. y. Nat. Chapter 5: I have referred only briefly to the content of chapter 5 . In this chapter I. io. al. er. will analyze concepts of truth, as they are applied in fictional and non-fictional historical writings. The study of truth is far too broad for a genuinely comprehensive. n. iv n C analysis, and I will necessarily limit h e my n gchoices c h i toUa few key theorists, including John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Nelson Goodman, and Marie-Laure Ryan. I will incorporate the ideas of these analysts into my own for what I hope is a unique ferment, and we will see how various conceptions and approaches to truth become something like the manifold techne discussed above. I conclude the chapter with an independent analysis and theory of truth, which I hope strengthens the ideas and contexts examined. Chapter 6: I will briefly conclude and summarize the work and reflect on its significance..

(37) 37. With all of the above said, I trust readers have an overview of my approach, and ultimately hope that I have defended, at least here at the beginning, the incredible power and ubiquity of historical narrative, which courses from the very foundation of lived experience, and from this source conditions and shapes the human communicative practices out of which emerge our stories and our histories. Humorist Ashleigh Brilliant has written that, “Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story,” and his droll words reminds us that life itself—our true history—stems from the fundaments of story—fiction we may say—such that given narrative elements structure. 政 治 大. lived experience. Strange as it may sound, I believe that in light of these connections,. 立. we may find that at times truth becomes fiction, and back again, with their varied con-. ‧ 國. 學. stituents and tissues modulating, inflecting and metamorphosing within the alembic of. ‧. lived and narrated experience in all of their copious glory.. sit. y. Nat. In light of some of these main ideas, theorists and thinkers in years past have, I. io. al. er. think, for the most part focused on nudging fiction a bit closer to history. To be sure they have been remarkably successful in this enterprise. My aim in this study, though. n. iv n C part and parcel with this idea, mayhnevertheless e n g c hbei itsUreverse, and I will try to push history deeper into the fictive. At a high level, I think that descriptions and analyses to date have given less than adequate attention to several key areas—aesthetics in lived experience (and, for that matter, in narrative), consciousness and human sensibilities,. ethics and associated morality in historical experience and narrative, intersubjectivity, and the modality of existence (and narrative). In a word, the true extent of how a network of narration in history extends well beyond historiography, proper, and commixes into diverse other areas of endeavor and communication, has not been effectively and pragmatically described. It is almost as if these prior commentators in some.

(38) 38 ways failed to view the entire scope of this topic, and largely remained inside given narrative universes, with the joists of these structures consistently shaping final analyses. Of course in many ways this is a credible approach—those very members do provide useful and sound support—but there is also the possibility that these trusses are at times limiting us, impeding our view outside the strictly narrative edifice, compelling explanatory structures that a bit too often refer back on themselves, to their own premises or terms. Ultimately, I hope to venture further afield, for I believe that the very narrative essences and stays supporting the structures before us extend farther out than has thus far been known, and that as we trace these indices into more varied. 政 治 大. areas of experience, communication and interaction, we will apprehend in more accu-. 立. rate and integrated ways aggregate formations of history and narrative. Simply put,. ‧ 國. 學. and in conclusion, I will try to show in this analysis new contours, highlights, depth. sit. n. al. er. io. F re dri c J a meso n. y. Nat. rience.. ‧. and detail of the intricate, heartfelt enterprise of historical exposition, and even expe-. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. YEARS AGO, IN HIS The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Sym-. bolic Act, Fredric Jameson famously urged literary scholars to “Always historicize!” and his exhortation seemed to jolt awake an entire generation. After decades of formalisms that had focused on interesting-but-essentially-dry internal features of literature—poetic embellishment, linguistic husbandry, compositional contours, design niceties—or, alternatively and more recently at the time, admirably insurgent but in so many ways contrived deconstructionist and postmodern paradigms—the reminder for readers and scholars to seriously address the hard-bitten experience of social and political history—the very pith of which comprises the manifold incipience, incident and.

(39) 39 actualization of human endeavor and communication—was a breath of fresh air and a battle cry. Jameson was spot-on correct when he emphasized the “omnipresence of history and the implacable influence of the social” (20) in cultural and literary studies, and the monumental impact these conditions had on how humans go about presenting/arguing and representing/narrating experiences and ideas. Yet further, Jameson, William A. Lane Professor in the Program in Literature at Duke University, stated in no uncertain terms that “‘interpretation’ […] demands the forcible or imperceptible transformation of a given text into an allegory of its particular master code or ‘transcendental signified’” (58). This master code and accom-. 政 治 大. panying transcendental signified could be understood as constituting lived historical. 立. experience in both the general and the specific, and also the intricately woven meta-. ‧ 國. 學. narratives that humans construct to convey and interpret this experience.17 In sum,. ‧. “History is an interpretive code that includes and transcends all the others” (100), and. sit. y. Nat. “only a genuine philosophy of history is capable of respecting the specificity and. io. al. er. radical difference of the social and cultural past while disclosing the solidarity of its polemics and passions, its forms, structures, experiences, and struggles, with those of. iv n C We get theh gist, i Ufill the wings of this theory, and e nbutgwhat c hwill n. the present day” (18).. 18. how will what will no doubt be a complex operation get off the ground? The answer to this question, in a word, is by way of “the all-informing process of narrative” (13, emphasis in original), which is no less than “the central function or instance of the human mind” (13, emphasis in original), and a structural, ideological, ontological, distinctly physical and epistemological embodiment in which the evaluation and communication of historical process and development “can be apprehended and read as the deeper and more permanent constitutive structure in which the empirical textual objects know intelligibility” (97). Jameson astutely notes that narrative works in con-.

(40) 40 junction with a given rhetorical thrust in language and life—the darstellung/vorstellung axis—and from this platform/approach, we are off to the races. After reviews in his book of Althusserianism and Freudian/Lacanian psycho-semantics, Jameson introduces a broadened perspective by way of Northrop Frye, and draws attention to the idea of narrative as a central historico-hermeneutic conception. From here Jameson moves into more concrete elements of his analysis, including the introduction of three “concentric frameworks” that will, appealingly, “widen[] out […] the sense of the social ground of a text” (both 75). These frameworks, the necessary “semantic horizons” in literature (75), are the “political,” the “social,” and finally be-. 政 治 大. come “history […] conceived in its vastest sense” (75). These perspectives transform. 立. into or comprise new forms and constituents in the milieu of history itself, and this. ‧ 國. 學. history, as we all now well know, “is inaccessible to us except in textual form [and]. ‧. can be approached only by way of prior (re)textualization” (82). This was and contin-. sit. y. Nat. ues to be bold, erudite analysis, and we further learn—we may have guessed it in ad-. io. al. er. vance—that the form of this “(re)textualization” is narrative symbolization, which is no less than an environment wherein “the historical origins of the things themselves. n. iv n C and that more intangible historicity the concepts and categories by which we ath ofe n gchi U tempt to understand those things” meet up and mingle “in the same place” (both 9). This “deeper narrative structure” is first and foremost one of the tools to “direct[] our attention to those determinate changes in the historical situation” (both 146).. Up to this point Jameson has largely hit the nail on the head, framing an encompassing, coherent, bountiful and decidedly functional hermeneutic framework. At the highest level, I follow this approach, and I hope that in my own analysis I cam employ Jameson’s ideas, if obliquely, in sound and fruitful ways. And yet, for me, in spite of their importance, Jameson’s ideas are insufficient in important ways. First and.

(41) 41 foremost, no one can doubt that ideology is virtually the centrifuge that defines, discriminates and distributes Jameson’s ideas in The Political Unconscious.19 One would hardly doubt that ideology is indeed important to historical experience both lived and narrated—views of the past are tied in countless ways to visions of the present and future, which is to say they are, in a broad sense, ideological. But over-dependence on this approach ultimately becomes one-dimensional. In a word, for me Jameson’s approach is too ideological (more specifically, too Marxist), which inevitably binds his analysis to highly politicized, tendentious interpretation and evaluation, which distorts findings.20 To be sure Jameson extends, modernizes and diversifies his Marxist direc-. 政 治 大. tives in various ways. But nevertheless, his analysis for me in some ways goes too far,. 立. misfires, is too often remote and unsuitable in terms of present-day hermeneutics and. ‧ 國. 學. historical understanding, and is ultimately doomed by certain outmoded fundaments.. ‧. The above said, Jameson certainly lays his cards on the table, from his identi-. sit. y. Nat. fication of the ideologeme as “the smallest intelligible unit of the essentially antago-. io. al. er. nistic collective discourses of social classes” (76)—no doubt a brilliant stroke (also employed by Bakhtin), but nevertheless, steeped in combative ideological dogma, and. n. iv n C a seemingly reductionist view thath could i Uin a veritable aesthetic tumultus e nfail g ctohtake at work in the “collective and class discourses” (76) that emerge up and out of the above-mentioned “cultural objects” (that is, texts; 75). To bracket out or astringe—for this I feel Marxist theoretical models largely do—the contingent and colorful, contested and conjunctive, apprehensive and actuated, synthetic and superabundant elements (the substance of which I posit we could even still legitimately and more generously fold into the conception of ideology and ideologemes) of these very cultural objects and texts is, I think, an oversimplification. Further, Jameson states his view of texts as “essentially polemic and strategic ideological confrontation[s] between the.

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