Historiographic and shape them from necessarily subjective

and ideologically laden perspectives.

Metafiction In order to project this notion, historio-
MICHAEL BUTTER
graphic metafiction makes use of a broad
variety of thematic and formal means. Plots
usually revolve around characters openly
The term “historiographic metafiction” was
concerned with making sense of the past,
coined by Linda Hutcheon in her essay “Be-
figures such as historians, detectives, or
ginning to Theorize the Postmodern” in 1987
archivists who study documents, data, and
and then further developed in her seminal
testimonies to arrive at an understanding
study A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988) to
of what has happened. As a consequence,
describe “those well-known and popular
the action of most historiographic metafic-
novels which are both intensely self-reflexive
tions takes place on two different levels; the
and yet paradoxically also lay claim to his-
texts are almost always characterized by a
torical events and personages.” According to
dual time frame. They are set in a fictional
Hutcheon, novels such as E. L. Doctorow’s
present where one or more characters – often
Ragtime (1975) or William Kennedy’s Legs
first-person narrators who address specific
(1975) display “a theoretical self-awareness
narratees – undertake explorations of the
of history and fiction as human constructs past and frequently reflect on their activities
(historiographic metafiction) [that] is made and the epistemological problems they face.
the grounds for [a] rethinking and rework- Simultaneously, however, the novels are set
ing of the forms and contents of the past” in a fictional past where the events took
(1988 5). Historiographic metafiction thus place that these (amateur or professional)
constitutes a specific form of metafiction, historians are interested in. Sometimes the
which Patricia Waugh, in an equally influ- version of the past presented in the novel is
ential study, has defined as “fictional writing quite obviously a (re)construction by one or
which self-consciously and systematically several of the investigators in the fictional
draws attention to its status as an artifact in present, sometimes novels incorporate var-
order to pose questions about the relation- ious conflicting versions about what has
ship between fiction and reality” (1984 2). happened that stem from one or more of
However, historiographic metafiction adds a these investigator figures, and sometimes the
further dimension to such reflections: texts story of the investigator figure simply exists
that can be subsumed under the heading alongside the historical narrative with both
not only explore the workings of literature being related by a more or less covert narrator.
and lay bare its ontological status as fic- Invariably, however, such a juxtaposition of
tion. They additionally engage and unveil past and present “problematizes the very pos-
the parallels between writing literature and sibility of historical knowledge” (Hutcheon
historiography – the practice of writing 1988, 106). Accordingly, historiographic
history – suggesting that both are acts of metafiction implies that the past remains
construction that do not reflect or naively ultimately inaccessible, that historical narra-
represent reality or the past, but (re)invent tion is necessarily an act of the imagination,

The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, Edited by Brian W. Shaffer.

© 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444337822.wbetcfv2h012
2 HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION

and that historiography, therefore, is not a institutions of the past, its social structures
neutral account of what happened but rather and practices, could be seen, in one sense, as
a biased story determined by the needs and social text” (Hutcheon 1988 16). Historio-
convictions of those who tell it. graphic metafiction lays bare this inevitable
In Don DeLillo’s Libra (1988), for example, textuality of history through its own excessive
a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald and the intertextuality. In Libra, for instance, Don
assassination of John F. Kennedy, scenes ded- DeLillo quotes extensively from Oswald’s
icated to Oswald’s personal development and diary and the 26 volumes of testimonies and
his involvement with an unfolding conspir- depositions that the Warren Commission
acy to kill the president alternate with scenes published along with its official report. Other
describing how Nicolas Branch, a retired CIA novels shift the focus considerably from
analyst, attempts to write “the secret history factual to fictional intertexts to reveal that
of the assassination” (1988, 15). Twenty-five the distinction between fact and fiction (or,
years after Kennedy’s death, however, and for that matter, historiography and literature)
after 15 years of work, Branch has not yet is not an ontological one but is determined
written anything, as he is completely over- by habit and convention – a fact also often
whelmed by the quantity of documents and discussed at length by the novels’ narrators.
possible evidence available to him: “He is in Through a broad variety of devices such
too deep to be selective” (59). His inability as interventions by narrator figures or the
to structure the material and produce even a disturbance of a coherent image of the past
single line severely undermines the historical by the interpolation of scenes dedicated
narration that the other parts of the novel to those exploring the past, then, historio-
deliver, marking its account of what allegedly graphic metafiction destroys the illusionism
happened as clearly fictional and suggesting that more realist historical novels seek to
that “all efforts to discover order in [history] achieve. However, in order to deconstruct the
can only produce fictions of coherence” (Ick- idea that fiction can adequately represent or
stadt 1994, 310). Branch fails in his work even mirror reality, the novels first need to
because he is unwilling to make the selections build up such illusions themselves. Next to
necessary to fabricate such a fiction; he is metafictional devices that lay bare their own
unable to “stop assembling data” (DeLillo fictionality, they therefore also deploy the
1988, 59). Although his office is already a strategies of mimetic realism and oftentimes
“book-filled room” (14), he continues to offer large passages of rather traditional nar-
collect and study “[b]aptismal records, report ration. This explains why Hutcheon can refer
cards, postcards, divorce petitions, canceled to the novels she has in mind as “popular and
checks, daily time-sheets, tax returns, prop- well-known.” Unlike modernist texts, which
erty lists, postoperative x-rays,” and other only found a rather small readership, many
similar items (181). novels that can be called historiographic
His obsessive collecting, though, not only metafiction – and this goes in particular
reveals his failure to structure and orga- for British texts such as Graham Swift’s
nize his material. It also hints at another Waterland (1983) or Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s
dimension of writing history that all histo- Parrot (1984) – have indeed been bestsellers.
riographic metafiction invariably highlights: Their combination of historical narration
“We cannot know the past except through and metahistoriographic and metafictional
its texts: its documents, its evidence, even commentary obviously appealed to a broad
its eye-witness accounts are texts. Even the audience.
 HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION 3

As is apparent from the examples drawn will finally be frustrated” (Müller 1994, 40)
on so far, historiographic metafiction is a pre- and revealing “the process of making sense
dominantly postmodern phenomenon. As a in historical discourse to be temporary and
form of metafiction, it was a welcome venue unstable” (Griem 1994, 108). And both John
for artists struggling at least during the 1960s Dos Passos’s trilogy U.S.A. (1930–6) and
and 1970s with what John Barth has famously William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
called “the used-upness of certain forms can be seen as continuing this project, as
or exhaustion of certain possibilities” after they combine “an element of metafictional
high modernism (1976, 29). More impor- self-reflection [with] an awareness of the
tantly, though, historiographic metafiction problematic nature of historiographic recon-
has thrived under the cultural and epistemo- struction” (Müller 1994, 41). Yet, as Muller
logical conditions of postmodernity that are also stresses, “the historical novel remained a
characterized by a radical questioning of the more or less marginal genre within the move-
very possibility of identity, secure knowledge, ment of modernism” (42). It was only with
and any kind of representation. In the field of the advent of postmodernism in the 1960s
history, the epistemological skepticism of the that the issues that concerned Adams, Dos
past decades has led various theorists to arrive Passos, and Faulkner moved to the center of
at the same conclusions that historiographic artistic attention.
metafiction reaches by fictional means. Thus, In fact, for Linda Hutcheon, historio-
scholars like Hayden White (1973, 1978) and graphic metafiction is the postmodernist
Dominick LaCapra (1985) have also pointed way of writing as such. Since she sees post-
out that historians do not simply describe modernist art as continuing modernist
the past but also create stories about it. Fur- self-reflexivity and introspection, but para-
thermore, White, LaCapra, and others have doxically re-engaging history at the same
emphasized the crucial role that ideology and time, she has repeatedly argued that his-
the narrative templates available to the his- toriographic metafiction is “what would
torian play in this process. Moreover, similar characterize postmodernism in fiction”
to theorists arguing from a more explicitly (1988, ix). This claim, however, seems exag-
poststructuralist position than White and gerated, especially from today’s position, as
LaCapra do, historiographic metafiction has such a wholesale classification would neglect
also challenged the humanist notion of the the aesthetic and stylistic differences between
homogeneous subject and worked to question various forms of postmodernist fiction that
and complicate essentialist and fixed notions have developed over the last 50 years. Neither
of identity. do all postmodernist novels turn back to
Just like metafiction in general, however, history, nor do all novels that do so combine
historiographic metafiction is not an exclu- this return with metahistorical reflections.
sively postmodern phenomenon but has It is therefore advisable to regard histori-
a longer history. As, among others, Julika ographic metafiction, as Ansgar Nünning
Griem (1994) and Kurt Müller (1994) have (1995) has proposed in his comprehensive
shown, Henry Adams’s The Education of study of late-twentieth-century fiction with a
Henry Adams (published posthumously in historical bent, as one subgenre of the post-
1918) in many ways anticipates the larger modernist historical novel, a subgenre that
number of postmodernist texts by “dramatiz- coexists with various other forms of postmod-
ing both a continuous search for conceptual ernist historical and non-historical fiction.
order and a consciousness that this search The term “historiographic metafiction” thus
4 HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION

designates a group of texts that Elisabeth negotiating the limits and pitfalls of his-
Wesseling refers to as “self-reflexive historical toriography, they rewrite history from a
fiction” (1991, 83). Native American, African American, or
What comes into focus when the concept Asian American vantage point in order to
is narrowed down in this fashion is that, in do justice to minorities whose experiences
the United States, historiographic metafic- had been silenced by dominant discourses
tion has been particularly prominent among in the past. Accordingly, just as revisionist
proponents of what Andreas Huyssen (1984) approaches to historiography have demanded
has labeled “affirmative postmodernism” and provided attention to those ethnicities,
(16), that is, among white male writers of genders, and classes that are marginalized
the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s like John Barth, or even excluded in traditional accounts,
Robert Coover, or E. L. Doctorow. Barth’s such revisionist historical novels, as Nünning
The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), a novel that (1995) labels them, tell the stories of the sup-
reinvents the history of colonial America in pressed and give them a voice, for example,
order to expose the blanks and distortions by relating events from their point of view or
in traditional accounts; Coover’s The Public even employing them as narrators.
Burning (1977), which, narrated by Richard The concept of historiographic metafic-
Nixon, capitalizes on the metaphor of the tion also does not adequately describe the
witch-hunt to cast the trial and execution complex workings of recent novels such as
of the Rosenbergs during the early 1950s Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000)
as another instance of a collective paranoia or Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illu-
that can be traced back to the Puritans; and minated (2002), for which Katrin Amian
Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971), which (2008) has recently suggested the term
re-engages the same historical case, albeit “post-postmodern” in order to acknowl-
through the eyes of the Rosenbergs’ fictitious edge their “attempt to push beyond the
son, all wholeheartedly embrace the notion of all-too-familiar schemes of postmodern
a playful, chaotic, and destabilizing aesthetics textual critique” (159). Similar to Beloved
in their novels. insofar as it also negotiates issues related to
These texts thus differ markedly from traumatic memory, Foer’s novel, for instance,
those by female and ethnic writers who pays tribute to the fact that the insights of
Hans Bertens (2002) sees as promoting a affirmative postmodernist historiographic
“postmodernism of difference” (11). Ishmael metafiction have become rather common-
Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972); Maxine Hong place in the twenty-first century. Everything
Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Is Illuminated, for instance, is therefore no
a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976); Toni Mor- longer interested in destabilizing historical
rison’s Beloved (1987); Leslie Marmon Silko’s accounts and unveiling them as subjective
Almanac of the Dead (1991); and Gerald constructions. Taking this notion for granted,
Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus (1991), for the novel instead explores ways of establish-
example, also perform a postmodernist turn ing and stabilizing an intersubjective version
back to history, but they do so in different of the history of the small Ukrainian shtetl
fashion and for dissimilar ends. Although Trachimbrod after all – an attempt Amian
they challenge established narratives just as calls the novel’s “will to believe anyway” (191).
historiographic metafiction does, the agenda In an essay entitled “Postmodern After-
of these texts is more explicitly political and thoughts,” Linda Hutcheon (2002) has
revisionist. Rather than being interested in acknowledged that the fiction of today differs
 HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION 5

considerably from the texts she labeled histo- Doctorow, E. L. (1971). The Book of Daniel. New
riographic metafiction during the 1980s. In York: Random House.
this piece, Hutcheon treats postmodernism Doctorow, E. L. (1975). Ragtime. New York: Ran-
dom House.
“as a thing of the past” and defines it as “a
Dos Passos, J. (1946). U.S.A. 3 vols. Boston:
twentieth-century phenomenon” (2002, 5). Houghton Mifflin.
Yet, regardless of the question whether or not Engler, B., & Müller, K., (eds.) (1994). Histori-
literary historians of the future will follow ographic Metafiction in Modern American and
Hutcheon in this periodization, contempo- Canadian Literature. Paderborn: Schöningh.
rary novels such as Everything Is Illuminated Faulkner, W. (1936). Absalom, Absalom! New York:
can only be understood as responses to his- Random House.
Foer, J. S. (2002). Everything Is Illuminated. Boston:
toriographic metafiction. They may explore
Houghton Mifflin.
new ways of writing, but in doing so they Griem, J. (1994). A Lesson for Henry Adams: The
remain intimately indebted to the insights Failure of Teaching History to Clio’s Ameri-
of earlier postmodernist fiction. As a con- can Daughters. In B. Engler & K. Müller (eds.),
sequence, the concept of historiographic Historiographic Metafiction in Modern Ameri-
metafiction remains an indispensable and can and Canadian Literature. Paderborn: Schön-
powerful tool in any attempt to describe ingh, pp. 103–26.
and analyze postmodernist fiction. It is best Hutcheon, L. (1987). Beginning to Theorize Post-
modernism. Textual Practice, 1, 10–31.
understood, however, as referring to a post-
Hutcheon, L. (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism:
modernist subgenre of the historical novel History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge.
that had its heyday during the 1970s and Hutcheon, L. (2002). Postmodern Afterthoughts.
1980s and that continues to influence novels Wascana Review, 37(1), 5–12.
of the early twenty-first century. Huyssen, A. (1984). Mapping the Postmodern.
New German Critique, 33, 5–52.
SEE ALSO: Modernist Fiction (AF); Postmod- Ickstadt, H. (1994). Loose Ends and Patterns of
ernist Fiction (AF); Politics and the Novel (BIF); Coincidence in Don DeLillo’s Libra. In B. Engler
& K. Müller (eds.), Historiographic Metafiction
Utopian and Dystopian Fiction (AF)
in Modern American and Canadian Literature.
Paderborn: Schöningh, pp. 299–312.
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS Kennedy, W. (1975). Legs. New York:
Coward-McCann.
Adams, H. (1918). The Education of Henry Adams. Kingston, M. H. (1976). The Woman Warrior:
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York:
Amian, K. (2008) Rethinking Postmodernism(s): Knopf.
Charles S. Peirce and the Pragmatist Negotia- LaCapra, D. (1985). History and Criticism. Ithaca:
tions of Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, and Cornell University Press.
Jonathan Safran Foer. Amsterdam: Rodopi. McHale, B. (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. New
Barnes, J. (1984). Flaubert’s Parrot. London: York: Methuen.
Jonathan Cape. Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. New York: Knopf.
Barth, J. (1960). The Sot-Weed Factor. Garden City, Müller, K. (1994). The Development Towards His-
NY: Doubleday. toriographic Metafiction in the American Novel.
Barth, J. (1967). The Literature of Exhaustion. In B. Engler & K. Müller (eds.), Historiographic
Atlantic Monthly, 8, 29–34. Metafiction in Modern American and Canadian
Coover, R. (1977). The Public Burning. New York: Literature. Paderborn: Schöningh pp. 35–51.
Viking. Nünning, A. (1995). Von historischer Fiktion zu
Danielewski, M. (2000). House of Leaves. New historiographischer Metafiktion [From Historical
York: Pantheon. Fiction to Historiographic Metafiction], 2 vols.
DeLillo, D. (1988). Libra. New York: Viking. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
6 HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION

Reed, I. (1972). Mumbo Jumbo. Garden City, NY: Wesseling, E. (1991). Writing History as a Prophet:
Doubleday. Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical
Silko, L. M. (1991). Almanac of the Dead. New Novel. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
York: Simon and Schuster. White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The Historical Imag-
Swift, G. (1983). Waterland. London: Heinemann. ination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Balti-
Vizenor, G. (1991). The Heirs of Columbus. more: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. White, H. (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in
Waugh, P. (1984). Metafiction: The Theory and Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: University Press.
Methuen.