Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - László Dányi: Nat Turner: History that Fiction Makes, or Fiction that History Makes?

LÁSZLÓ DÁNYI NAT TURNER: HISTORY THAT FICTION MAKES, OR FICTION THAT HISTORY MAKES? "History is indeed an argument without end/' (Pieter Geyl)

1 My essay aims to analyze to what extent William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner can be a clue to history, and how fictionalized, and/or historical the Turner figure is. Examining the relationship between the Turner of history and the Turner of imaginative recreation raises the question of where the boundary between fiction and history is. First I want to describe the age when the book was written, and to illustrate the controversy around Turner's fictional interpretation in Styron's book. Secondly, I wish to delineate the parameters of historical knowledge about Nat Turner, and, finally, to examine how he radiates over history and fiction. My presupposition is that a writer is historically situated, and thus his work expresses the sensibility of the age. William Styron's controversial text was written in the 60s, in the age of upheavals when a radical rearrangement of priorities contributed to the establishment of the image * Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992) 57. 33