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?
ideas and his Turner figure might be the humble 20th century man with his doubts who also struggles against the nightmarish past and is almost unable to bear the burden of the future, while trying to find consolation and seeking guidelines to the unattainable truth. Ascending from history and radiating in fiction, finally, the Turner figure is grasped by the historically conditioned reader, and this is the way it blurs the dividing line between history and fiction. Secondly, literary critics and historians attacked Styron by claiming knowledge of the truth and the clue to history. Their views are justified if I accept the traditional definition of clue. But Styron's novel cannot be a clue to history because it does not reveal much about THE truth and it does not offer THE ultimate answer. It reveals truths and untruths to the individual reader and indicates answers. But it is even more important that it raises questions, and by doing so, fiction becomes embedded in the history in it. His aforementioned brief talk at Wilberforce University substantiates the major implication of the novel that Styron simply tries to guide the reader in the chaotic 60s, but he also confesses that the turmoil is inexplicable. Is it inexplicable bacause the book indicates the mind of a 1950, white consensus conservative trying to make sense of a time and world that was leaving him behind? I am convinced that in Styron's view the reader cannot reach the core or the only one single meaning of the chaos, and Styron tries not to ultimately understand but simply to better understand the forces that shape the common destiny of blacks and whites. Ironically, this common destiny can even be manifested in hatred which is pretended unless you experience an intimate relationship with the other person. In other words the white man can be the object of the black man's hatred if they know each other. 3 4 Thirdly, the vitriolic and visceral responses to the novel and to history seem to accept the view that episteme is superior to doxa, so a writer's description is only an opinion, whereas a scholastic view is the knowledge. A writer can express his opinion, doxa, but it is history alone which can provide knowledge, episteme, and by doing so it is the sole holder of truth. 3 4 Styron, 258. 40
