Istoria ca literatură şi realităţile alternative
Rezumat
History as Literature and the Alternative Realities
Considered one of the most important and influential contemporary British writers, Graham Swift succeeded in imposing his artistic method with the publication of Waterland (1983). Apart from the plot, this novel illustrates many of the postmodern theories of aesthetic representation and also establishes an original balance between reality and its historic expression. Many literary critics analyzed Swift’s writing taking into consideration Hayden White’s ideas and subsequently underlined the British novelist’s prevalence as far as the limits of the mimesis or the relationship between fact and fiction are concerned. His other novels, such as Last Orders and Tomorrow, continue to explore the domain of personal memory related to that of history, but unfortunately do not reach the artistic level of Waterland, a masterpiece in its own way. Nevertheless, Graham Swift remains one of the most important representatives of postmodern fiction and one of the greatest masters of contemporary novel.
Keywords: postmodern novel, literary influence, history, reality, illusion, metafiction.
Bibliografie
Graham Swift, Pământul apelor (Waterland). Traducere de Traducere de Cristina Poenaru şi Maria-Sabina Draga, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2010.
Graham Swift, Ultima comandă (Last Orders). Traducere de Petru Creţia şi Cristina Poenaru, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2009.
Graham Swift, Mâine (Tomorrow). Traducere şi note de Cristiana Vişan, Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2008.
David Malcolm, Understanding Graham Swift, The University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Ninetinth-Century Europe, Baltimore & London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Hayden White, Figural Realism. Studies in the Mimesis Effect, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 2009.
