Re-writing History: the Postmodern Lives of Henry James

Madeleine Danova (St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria)

Email: mdanov2004@yahoo.co.uk

 

ABSTRACT:

The present paper will look at the way postmodern writers re-write the life of one of the most important authors in the Anglo-American literary tradition, Henry James, from the point of view of Linda Hutcheon’s understanding of “historiographic metafiction”. The novels discussed will be David Lodge’s The Author, the Author, Colm Toibin’s The Master, Emma Tennant’s Felony and Carol de Chellis Hill’s Henry James’ Midnight Song. All these present telling examples of the way historical facts are selected and positioned in the postmodern narrative and their analysis can provide illuminating conclusions for the way postmodern writing creates its world of fiction.