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?

iconoclastic because by the time the book was published Nat Turner as a freedom-fighter cultural hero had established his reputation, and manifested itself to be the adequate hero to justify the uniqueness of the strivings of black people. To sum up, my essay illustrates how fictionalized and malleable Nat Turner as a cultural hero is. Periodically some cultural heroes, various aspects of their lives and their personal qualities are magnified and put in the limelight, while others are thrust into the background, or completely ignored. The common feature between history and fiction is that they are both elastic and can be transformed, recast and abused conforming to the climate of opinion of the given age. The only real fact we know about him is that he was the leader of the Southampton insurrection. Not much is known about his motives and his characteristic features, and this lack of knowledge has initiated umpteen interpretations by historians and literary critics, which justifies the opinion that the clear-cut dividing line between history and fiction cannot be revealed, and history is not devoid of fiction and manipulation. From the historian's point of view, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. confirms the same idea. "Historians must always strive toward the unattainable ideal of objectivity. But as we respond to contemporary urgencies, we sometimes exploit the past for nonhistorical purposes, taking from the past, or projecting upon it, what suits our own society or ideology. History thus manipulated becomes an instrument less of disinterested intellectual inquiry than of social cohesion and political purpose."

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8 From the literary scholar's point of view, Zsolt Virágos concludes that literature can "effectively support or undercut, consolidate or counterpoint" the "ideologized product of social consciousness."

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9 In The Art of the Novel Milan Kundéra, Czech writer, reveals his views on the interrelationship between history and the fictional hero by affirming that not only should historical conditions establish the existential situation around the fictional hero, but history itself should be conceived and analyzed as an existential situation. We share our history, 3

8 Ibid., 47. 3

9 Zsolt K. Virágos, "Myth, Ideology and the American Writer," Hungarian Studies in English XXI (1990): 42. 42