Postcolonialism and the Historical Novel: Epistemologies of Contemporary Realism

Department

English

Document Type

Article

Publication Source

Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry

Publication Date

2014-3

Volume

1

Issue

1 (Special Issue: New Topographies of the Postcolonial)

First Page

51

Last Page

67

Abstract

The historical novel is one of the most popular and critically significant genres of postcolonial writing, but, to date, almost no systematic scholarship is dedicated to it. This essay proposes theoretical and critical parameters for exploring this genre. It begins with the observation that plausibility is a key principle articulated by many postcolonial writers and explores how framing novels in these terms, as a kind of realism, requires readers to negotiate heterogeneous structures of reference—and, in particular, to read imaginary characters as abstractions of historical phenomena. The second half of the paper explores the theoretical implications of this ontological heterogeneity, suggesting how the genre’s conventions are inflected by normative patterns of gender, race, and temporality. Overall, I propose that it is possible to read the postcolonial historical novel as a kind of allegory, and I offer the term allegorical realism to describe this paradoxical mixing of conceptual and affective knowledge.

DOI

10.1017/pli.2013.3

Comments

© 2014 Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2013.3

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