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Stories Of The Past: Viewing History Through Fiction
Green, Christopher
Green, Christopher
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2020-01
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Abstract
This thesis investigates how effective works of fiction are, through their depictions
of past worlds, in providing us with a resource for the study of the history of the
period in which that fiction is set. It assesses past academic literature on the role of
fiction in historical understanding, and on the processes involved in the writing,
reading, adapting, and interpreting of fiction. It contends that the creation and
consumption of fiction has not been looked at in a holistic way in terms of an overall
process that takes us from author to consumer with all of the potential intermediate
steps. The thesis proposes and describes such a process model, each step within
which contains a number of key elements, namely actors, actions, influences,
artefacts, and finally the real and imagined worlds of the fiction. It begins with the
author, who through actions of perception and adaptation, and affected by various
external influences, social, political, and aesthetic, mediates with elements of his or
her contemporary world and incorporates them into the imagined world of the initial
artefact, the novel. It describes how at each stage in the process other actors (critics,
adapters and curators) engage with previous artefacts such as the novel and previous
adaptations, and their own set of influences, and through actions of reception,
adaptation and interpretation create further artefacts such as critical reviews,
adaptations and tourist interpretations that comprise further imagined worlds that can
be compared to the author’s original imagined world, and by extension, the original
past world. Using a number of case studies of English novels of the period from
1800 to 1930, the thesis assesses what the practical evidence of the process in action
tells us about the ability of a novel to act as an adjunct to contemporary records in
providing insights into that original real world. These studies incorporate analysis of
the novels themselves, and of subsequent artefacts such as film and television
adaptations, curated literary places and guidebooks, and both professional and lay
reviews. The thesis concludes that fiction in its various forms, and especially in its
adapted and interpreted forms, whilst not a pure historical document as such, has the
ability to provide us with a vivid perception of a past world. It contends that the
process model could be used as an aid in the teaching of History or English
Literature, or as an aid to the general consumer of fiction, to help remove the layers
of imagined worlds that potentially lie between us and a past historical world,
thereby reducing the ability of that layering to create a misleading view of history.
Citation
Green, C. (2020). Stories Of The Past: Viewing History Through Fiction (Doctoral dissertation). University of Chester, UK.
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University of Chester
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Thesis or dissertation
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en