Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)
Studies - Judit Ágnes Kádár: Histories, Truths, Fictions. Interdisciplinary Relations of Historiography and Philosophy in the Context of Recent Western Canadian Fiction
Charles A. Beard, a historiographer of the so-called Progressive School of American history writing, was among the first historians who gave voice to their doubts concerning the univocal objectivity of the historian's job. In the 1930s he became interested in the question of historical (a philosophical sense: epistemological-) relativism. He advocated the fragmentary nature of historical knowledge and also investigated its nature and limitations, as he claimed: "no historian can arrive at more than a partial and biased version of the past. Each one is locked into a frame of reference" (Beard 480-1). Similarly to historians' notion of the frame of reference, the contextuality of any texts —literary or scientific, especially the historical recordings of past events —is a central issue in historiographic metafictious novels, too. Central characters like Professor Pieixoto, director of the Twenty-first Century Archives in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the archaeologist William Dawe in Robert Kroetsch's Badlands , the narrator-historiographers of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, George Bowering's Burning Water and Jack Hodgins' The Invention of the World, are all seekers of a new narrative version of previously established myths. However, rigid scientific data-collection and recording may lead to biased presentation. Howard Zinn, the famous New Left historian, gives a strong criticism of academic historiography that seems to forget about humanistic goals, being blinded by the historians' orthodox professional concern and gathering data and facts only (see for instance: Henry Butterfield's concept of the so called technical history). In these novels researchers of the past, the archaeologist or the explorer for instance represent the unwillingness of many scientists to abdicate their obsessions since they are inclined to uphold a myth that excludes the existence of others' truths. Gossman claims that the privilege of the historian is that "he alone can translate the confusing messages of the Other into language, therefore, can be the instrument of an orderly reconstruction and harmonization of society" (282). It is interesting to keep in mind this extremely high professional selfesteem when examining fictional characters like Pieixoto and William Dawe, the literary parallels of some historians, as presented in the following. It is a fundamental assumption in these novels that history and attempts to know and record the past within one particular system 23
