Overview

Even at the height of its popularity in the early nineteenth century the historical novel faced criticism at many levels. After its predominance in the 1810s and 1820s writers and historians shunned it as a travesty of their respective disciplines. Even so, the historical novel has frequently attracted a wide-ranging public right up to the present day. Brian Hamnett examines key novels, by authors including Scott, Balzac, Manzoni, Dickens, Eliot, Flaubert, Fontane, Galdós, and Tolstoy, revealing the contradictions inherent in this form of fiction and exposing the challenges writers faced in attempting to represent a reality that linked past and present. He argues that the historical novel in the nineteenth century was a common European phenomenon with considerable interconnection of themes and periods. Accordingly, the book ranges from the British Isles and France through the Germanic territories, Italy and Spain, to the Russian Empire, identifying the different objectives and phases of the historical novel. Although historical novels did appear in the two previous centuries, the form came to maturity in the nineteenth century, a consequence of the developing nature of history as a discipline distinct from literature and nhilosophy, and the increasing primacy of the novel for writers and the reading public. Yet, the frontiers between history and literature remained blurred, and the two disciplines continued to influence one another as each sought a faithful representation of human experience.

Full Product Details

Author:   Brian Hamnett (Research Professor,, Research Professor,, University of Essex)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.516kg
ISBN:  

9780198732419

ISBN 10:   0198732414
Pages:   342
Publication Date:   09 April 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION PART ONE THE HISTORICAL NOVEL AS GENRE AND PROBLEM: AN ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL EXAMINATION 1: An Exploration of the Categories: History, Narrative, the Novel and Romance 2: History and Fiction: The Trials of Separation and Reunion 3: The German Sturm und Drang, Historical Drama, and Early Romantic Fiction 4: Scottish Flowering: Turbulence or Enlightenment 5: Romanticism and the Historical Novel 6: The Historians' Response to the Historical Novel 7: History and Invention in the Italian Question PART TWO INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS AND UNSTABLE FORM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL'S DILEMMA 1: The Historical Novel at mid-Century Crisis? 2: Is there a Way out? Two Experiments in Myth and History 3: Galdós and the Novel of Spanish National Identity 4: The Struggle for Identity and Purpose in the Russian Historical Novel: From Pushkin to Tolstoy 5: The German Historical Novel 6: Modernism and Beyond FICTITIOUS HISTORIES SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Author Information

Brian Hamnett was born in Colchester 1942. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge University from 1961 to 1967. He has taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Reading, and the University of Strathclyde. He is currently a Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of Essex. His fields of interest include Iberian and Latin-American history and literature; nineteenth- and twentieth-century (and beyond) literature, particularly in relation to history.

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