Prof. Derek P. Royal
ENG 597 – Recent American Fiction
Historiographic Metafiction
[H]istorical fiction is that which is modelled on historiography to the extent that it is motivated and made operative by a notion of history as a shaping force. (113)
[Historiographic metafiction] privileges
two modes of narration, both of which problematize
the entire notion of subjectivity—multiple points of view or an overtly
controlling narrator. In neither do we find a subject confident of his/her
ability to know the past with any certainty. (117-118)
[P]ostmodernism directly confronts
the past of literature—and of historiography, for it too derives from other
texts (documents). it uses and abuses those
intertextual echoes, inscribing their powerful allusions and then subverting
that power through irony. (118)
Historiographic metafiction shows
fiction to be historically conditioned and history to be discursively
structured. (120)
Historiographic metafiction is one kind of postmodern novel which rejects projecting present beliefs and standards onto the past and asserts the specificity and particularity of the individual past event. It also suggests a distinction between “events” and “facts” that is shared by many historians. Since the documents become signs of events, which the historian transmutes into facts, as in historiographic metafiction, the lesson here is that the past once existed, but that our historical knowledge of it is semiotically transmitted. Finally, Historiographic metafiction often points to the fact by using the paratextual conventions of historiography to both inscribe and undermine the authority and objectivity of historical sources and explanations. (122-123)
—from Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction.
Detective Fiction
In traditional detective fiction, the detective uses reason and deduction to restore order and truth, establish a correspondence between people’s actions and their motivations, and find the connection between the outward sign and its hidden or disguised signified. He searches for, and usually discovers, a plot (in multiple senses of the word) underlying the crime and gives meaning and coherence to the events within it.
There are two main kinds of detective fiction, “classical” (usually associated with British fiction, specifically the stories of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) and “hard-boiled” (such as the fictions of Raymond Chandler and Dashell Hammett). The classic detective novel emphasizes the powers of reason in overcoming a mystery that is always only apparent. In this type, the detective’s actions lead to a clearly logical and methodical solution of the mystery. The hard-boiled novel, on the other hand, presents a character who finds himself in an absurd world. Yet despite its unpredictability, the hard-boiled detective nonetheless sticks to the job, much like Sisyphus.
The Anti-detective Novel
[The anti-detective novel] calls into question not the abilities or efforts of the individual detective, but rather the methodology of detection itself, a methodology that valorizes the powers of reason in the face of mystery, that validates the hermeneutic enterprise, and most importantly, that allows for an authoritative position outside the events themselves from which omniscient knowledge is attainable: in short, the position and knowledge of the author, toward which detective and reader strive.
— Madeleine Sorapure, “The
Detective and the Author: City of
The Deconstructive Anti-detective Novel
[A novel in which] reality is so tentacular and full of clues that the detective risks his sanity as he tries to find a solution. In a very Poesque way, the confrontation is no longer between a detective and a murderer, but between the detective and reality, or between the detective’s mind and his sense of identity, which is falling apart, between the detective and the “murderer” in his own self.
— Stefano Tani, The Doomed Detective: The Contribution of the Detective Novel to
Postmodern American and Italian Fiction.