Is
it very hard to make the distinction between history and fiction? Why has
history become the bone of contention in the postmodern age? How does the
postmodern detective fiction lead to uproar? The postmodern elements in the
works of Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, and
Travels in Hyperreality draws our attention to the multiple contentions of
history, myth and fiction.
When we study The Name of the Rose in context
of postmodernist theory of history and fiction, we find that Eco prioritizes
concerns to present the changing social, political and religious spheres with
the help of fiction. It also leads us back into the domain of detective fiction
wherein the world of Conan Doyle emerges. Fiction grounds on imagination that
helps in the construction of narrative picture and history gives the picture of
past. Fiction infiltrates into the territory of facts with the presentation of
verified data in the form of names, factions, dates, and incidents. This
crossing of the boundary blurs the demarcation of history and fiction as the
reader finds himself incapable to treat the content fact or imaginatively
constructed. Linda Hutcheon argues that the writing of postmodernists is best
represented by those works of historiographic metafiction which self
consciously distort history. This distortion of history could be accomplished
through various means such as blending of “history and fantasy.” Postmodern historical novels incorporate
historical documents, events and historical personages into the fictional
worlds of their works, drawing attention at the same time to this process.
Linda Hutcheon in her Poetics of Postmodernism labels postmodern
historical novels as “historiographic metafictions” since they thematize the
theory of contemporary historiography and problematize the distinction between
history and fiction. She explains her reason for such a label thus:
“[historiographic metafiction] puts into question, at the same time as it
exploits, the grounding of historical knowledge in the real past. This is why I
have been calling this historiographic metafiction.” [1]
The
movie adaptation of The Name of the Rose directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
starring Sean Connery as William of Baskerville and Christian Slater as Adso of
Melk help in understanding the issue more deeply. The theory and practice of historiographic
metafictions with reference to detective fiction and post modernism also help
in the study of text and its adaptation keeping in view the development in the
field of literature with the involvement of media.
The debate on the substitutive nature of history and
fiction becomes important when I read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is drawn from a manuscript, narrating a
story of monastery from the fourteenth century. The manuscript is based on a
real incident and Eco employs its content to write the book incorporating real
characters and organizations. He sheds light on the problems people faced owing
to their religious positions, and how science proved detrimental to religion. The book exhibits the significance of rational
thinking and theory of deduction (primarily used by Sherlock Holmes) to access
knowledge. The study has discovered that history is a source of knowledge about
the past which uses scientific methods as a detective employs to solve a
mystery. The study also takes into
account the theories of history and fiction with a specific reference to
borrowing of content and characters from other sources without acknowledgment. Foucault’s Pendulum is a story of three
editors who develop a PLAN from second rate manuscripts on historical
incidents. A secret organization considers the fictitious PLAN to be real and
kills the three editors. They borrow their content on the Templars and other
secret organizations from the manuscripts. The study shows that history emerges
through multiple texts. Each text has its own significance and essence; each
text oozes from the other. The production of text questions the authenticity
from which it has evolved. In Foucault’s
Pendulum, Eco sets a conversation between past and present then move to the
borrowing from the past and its articulation in new framework.
No comments:
Post a Comment