Fictional or Imaginary History in Romance Literatures since the 19th Century: an Attempt at a Typology and Overview of an Unsuspected Formal Genre (I)
Abstract
The double dimension —documentary and artistic— of historical writing has been virtually overshadowed by the emphasis on the scientific nature of the discipline and its subsequent expulsion from the literary canon from the nineteenth century onwards. Fictional or imaginary history then appeared as a way to safeguard the literariness of history as a formal gender, using the rhetorical discourse of historiography to achieve an effect of historicity in texts that are, however, clearly fictional, and which often have a satirical or cautionary intent. Nevertheless, most of them convey first of all considerations on the evolution of humanity, and on its History. Examples of this genre are relatively abundant and can be classified into several thematic types. This first part of this study focuses on the alternate history, the apocryphal history, the animal history, the allegorical history, and the parallel history.
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