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
acquire a more realistic identity... and to satisfy our cravings for continuation as human beings" (100). H. J. Hanham emphasized the manifold nature of the historian's job, since he must be a natural story-teller, a poet, a philosopher, a biographer, a scientist and a politician, too (Hanham 65). The circumstances and the purposes of his writing will decide which one dominates his tone and method. Having a look at Canadian historiography, it seems that the majority of earlier historiography in Canada was devoted to either the concept of achieving political nationhood, basically meaning the study of treaties and conferences that shaped the nation's fate in the face of White documents, or to the environmentalist approach represented by for instance Harold Innis, which meant the study of the East-West or the urban-rural axis, essentially the splits defining Canada. History writing before the 1920s about Western Canada, for instance, was devoted to the uniqueness, frontierism and the strong sense of regional identity of the West, whereas this vision was gradually altered with the harsh climatic image enforced during the 1930s. Later on the political and economic hinterland image became popular (e.g. D. Francis and J. M .S. Careless), a vision that westerners have to get rid of themselves. Regionalism in its contemporary interpretations establishes a closer interrelation of geography, history and literature, where the subjective inner mindscape of the observer comes into the foreground and creates more valid approaches than the previous ones. Correlative ideas guide some major trends in literature today, too. Writers of the genre of historiographic metafiction explore much the same philosophical concerns, especially the epistemological question of How shall I interpret this world? In most texts the authors treat the past and the historical remembering of past events in an ironic way, which means that they present the different efforts to impose order on chaos —seemingly of past events and memories, but virtually of conceptualizing the world. In an ironic manner they suggest the writer's own uncertainties and counter-reactions against any authoritarian ways of thinking. Becker detected similar tendencies in history, too, as he writes: "Every generation, our own included, will, must inevitably, understand the past and anticipate the future in the light of its own restricted experience, must inevitably play on the dead whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind" (35). 26