The Historical Narrative In the hands of a skillful novelist, the hist

The origins of modern historical consciousness may extend as far back as the Renaissance, while for a long time in America's history, the terms "romance" and "historical novel" were nearly synonymous (Kantor 8). Yet, the desire to create a truly historical narrative is a distinctly modern phenomenon (Cowart 2).

Since all novels occur in some sense of time and space, while interspersing a certain degree of fact within the confines of their fiction, what is unique about a historical novel? In admittedly broad terms, Cowart defines the historical novel as "fiction in which the past figures with some prominence" (6).

While a historical novelist must uphold the same conventions to narrative technique and character as any other novelist, such novelists are bound by their inclusion of non-fictional characters and the predetermined course of history. Such novelists gain more latitude in motive. Theodore Roosevelt may still charge San Juan Hill, but it may be the motives (i.e. vanity or des

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ise to power of yellow journalism and the popular press, Vidal opts to sanitize the past, expediting any complexities (i.e. discrepancies of time) in order to match his own narrow and often cynical temperament (Baker 88). His consistent narrative point of view works best for this purpose. Distortion is inevitable with such tactics. What is true becomes an issue. Fabrication of history in the name of entertainment becomes the mother of invention here. Tom Carson points out in Contemporary Literary Criticism that such writers as Vidal have an underlying tendency to make history into "something made by enormously well-spoken people, ironists all too easily able to delight in the showmanship of their own intrigues, all these books, satisfying in the reading, glance off in your mind afterwards" (397). While Theodore Roosevelt may be sacrificed by Vidal's buzz saw approach to characterization, such practices go beyond questions of whether the events are consequential to contemporary issues. Readers of this genre may discover that the historical novel is, as Vidal's Caroline Sanford points out, too full of "everything except history." Such attention to intent is a hallmark of this form. For example, in E.L. Doctorow's Ragt
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Approximate Word count = 2063
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)