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

tendency to break with the limitations of previous ideas about the nature and function of the literary work of art can be observed. The distinction between Historie and discourse is an important concern of contemporary literature, especially postmodern novels, though, as Linda Hutcheon argues, postmodern literature earlier was claimed to be ahistorical (Poetics 87). One of the main focuses of present-day literary criticism is the investigation of the difference between concepts that regard the mimetic functions of literature, the description and reflection of human environment, like Realism and Modernism in general, versus the contemporary (postmodern) interest in language as a creative power which can construct various worlds and which does not aim at reflecting anything directly, but suggests a different approach to our own many worlds instead. Starting the investigation with the philosophy of history, it is well known that the question of the nature of historical writing'goes back to the time of Quintilian, who treated history as a form of epic, while Heracleitus attempted to define the discourse of history. Cicero was the first to make a distinction between the mere chronicling of events and the literary production. Nietzsche viewed all products of thought ironically and reduced historical thinking "to the same fictional level as science and philosophy, grounding it in the poetic imagination along with these, and thereby releasing it from adherence to an impossible ideal of objectivity and disinterestedness" (White "Croce", 376). Another major step regarding this question was made by Benedetto Croce, who enunciated the notion of history as an art form. In the 20th century, a conservative trend of historiography seems to favor the idea that history writing is a monological system of explanation, while the more progressive trend tries to accept the findings of other fields of knowledge, such as philosophy and literature, and, to a different extent, accept the multiplicity of possible approaches and interpretations without questioning the seriousness of their scientific undertaking. Of course, the historian's confidence in his job is strong in the first case and some of the novels that belong to historiograpic metafictional writing represent this state of mind. However, it is uncertain in the second case; interestingly enough this uncertainty factor is central for some characters and/or narrators in the novels, too. 22