HISTORICAL FICTION, LITERARY POSTMODERNISM AND THE NOVELS OF PETER ACKROYD ...

290 Pages·2009·15.79 MB·English

ENCOUNTERING 'THIS SEASON'S RETRIEVAL':
HISTORICAL FICTION, LITERARY POSTMODERNISM
AND THE NOVELS OF PETER ACKROYD
by
BRETT JOSEF GRUBISIC
B.A., University of Victoria, 1992
M.A., University of Victoria, 1994
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
(Department of English)
We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
July 2001
© Brett Josef Grubisic, 2001
In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced
degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it
freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive
copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my
department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or
publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written
permission.
Department of
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada
Date
DE-6 (2/88)
Abstract
"Encountering 'this season's retrieval': Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the
Novels of Peter Ackroyd" engages the novels Peter Ackroyd has published, and situates
them within broader generic considerations and critical dialogue. Part I, an extended
prefatorial apparatus, places Ackroyd and his published fiction within three historico-
critical contexts: the problem of author-as-reliable-source and the disparate histories of (a)
the historical novel and (b) postmodernism in general (and literary postmodernism in
particular). By interrogating the histories and points-of-contention of these areas, this Part
aims to problematize critical discourse enveloping Ackroyd's fiction.
Part II, comprised of four chapters, discusses specific groupings of Ackroyd's
novels. After providing an overview of relevant aspects of the novels and their reception by
critics, Chapter A, "Moulding History with Pastiche in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde.
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America." considers the multiple
functioning of pastiche—often considered a mainstay postmodern implement—in
Ackroyd's work. The chapter concludes that rather than achieving a singular effect in the
novels, pastiche works in divergent manners and confounds the reading of past historical
actuality they ostensibly represent. Chapter B, "The Presence of the Past: Comedic and
Non-Realist Historicism in The Great Fire of London and First Light." provides an
overview of relevant aspects of the novels, and then analyzes how the presence of comedy
in otherwise sombre historical fiction interrupts the realism of the narrative. This chapter
argues that while camp comic effects disrupt the authority of quasi-historiographic
techniques they cannot fully subvert realism and so create a suspensive modality. Chapter
C, "PastlPresent: The Uses of History in Hawksmoor. Chatterton. The House of Doctor
Dee and English Music." interrogates elements of the past-present fugue trajectories of
these novels in order to problematize schematic readings of their supposed cultural politics.
ii
Finally, Chapter D, "Those Conventional Concluding Remarks: The Plato Papers.
(National) History and Politics," places Ackroyd's most recent novel (one
uncharacteristically set in the future) within the preoccupations of his earlier fiction. The
chapter concludes with a brief outline of future scholarship that would investigate the
national Englishness constructed throughout Ackroyd's biographical and novelistic work.
iii
Table of Contents
Abstract ii
Table of Contents iv
Part I: The Prefatory and the Introductory; or, The Situation of
the Novel(ist), in Consideration of Authorship and the Potted,
Contentious Histories of Historical Fiction and (Literary)
Postmodernism
1. Portrait of the Artist as Multiplicitous Simultaneity 4
The Author Mediated
Mediated self-representation (i)—Writer-as-revolutionary
Mediated self-representation (ii)—Novelist-as-(fraudulent)-historian
Mediated self-representation (iii)—rWriter-as-provocateur/trickster/liar
Mediated self-representation (iv)—Writer-as-English-mystic
Mediated self-representation (v)—Writer-as-conservative/non-
postmodernist
Mediated identity (i)—Ackroyd-as-enigma
Mediated identity (ii)—Ackroyd-as-contradictory-mess/fraud
Mediated identity (iii)—Ackroyd-as-postmodernist
27 Politics and Historical Fiction: Unearthing the Past with Fictions 21
(i) The Historical Novel: Past
(ii) The Historical Novel: Present
(a) The Post-War Novel
(b) The Post-War Historical Novel
(c) Naming the Prodigy
(d) The Prodigy in Perspective
3. The Politics of Postmodernism: Framing the Debate 48
(i) What Do We Mean When We Talk About Postmodernism?
(ii) What Do We Mean When We Talk About Postmodern Fiction?
(iii) Linda Hutcheon: The Use and Abuse of Postmodernism
(iv) Shaking Foundations?: Hutcheon's Historiographic Metafiction
4. Novel Situation 81
Part II: Novel Re-Situations
A. Moulding History with Pastiche in The Last Testament of
Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America 90
1. Historical Novel Traditions Revisited 91
2rSituating The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the
Limehouse Golem and Milton in America 96
(i) Aspects of the Novels
iv
(ii) Critical Reception
3. "allusions that lead nowhere'V'the culture of pastiche" 115
4. Ackroyd's Acts of Pastiche 126
(a) Wilde Versus Milton: Figural Revisions 130
(b) The Marxs, Gissing, Babbage: Historical Bit Players 140
B. The Presence of the Past: Comedic and Non-Realist Historicism in
The Great Fire of London and First Light 145
1. History Through a Comic Frame 146
2. Situating The Great Fire of London and First Light 149
(i) Aspects of the Novels
(ii) Critical Reception
3. Camp Comedic Historicism 166
(i) The Comedy Effect
(ii) Camp: c'est quoi 9a
(iii) Reading Camp in First Light and The Great Fire of London
4. Effecting "extreme artificiality": A Note on 'Non-Realist Historicism' 189
C. PastlPresent: The Uses of History in Hawksmoor, Chatterton.
The House of Doctor Dee and English Music 195
1. History-Telling, Category Making 196
2. Situating Hawksmoor, Chatterton. The House of Doctor Dee
and English Music 198
(i) Aspects of the Novels
(ii) Critical Reception
3. History: Inside and Outside the Story 227
(i) History Within the Worlds of the Novels
(a) What Sort of Exemplar is Timothy Harcombe?
(b) A Premature Death
(c) Two Cases of Sudden Disappearance
(ii) History/Novels/Audiences 243
D. Those Conventional Concluding Remarks: The Plato Papers.
(National) History and Politics 255
Works Cited 268
v
Encountering 'this season's retrieval':
Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and
the Novels of Peter Ackroyd
Parti:
The Prefatory and the Introductory; or, The Situation of the Novel(ist), in Consideration of
Authorship and the Potted,
Contentious Histories of Historical Fiction and
(Literary) Postmodernism
2
Why A Historical?
There are many aspects of writing historical fiction, many problems and many
challenges. Some of these are common to all types of writing, others are particular to
the genre. A historical can be every bit as gripping a read as a contemporary novel,
and may be even more so. An outstanding one will linger in the minds of its readers
for many years: Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, one of many notable first
novels, is a classic example. But, far from being easier to write than contemporary
fiction, it must be faced that historicals are, arguably, more demanding. So let us
look at some of the reasons which tempt us to have a go.
Not Because It Looks Easier—It's Not
A historical novel may look like an easy option ...
Rhona Martin, Writing Historical Fiction [a guide]
3
If, as a translated Michel Foucault contended in 1971, "[w]hat is found at the
historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origins; it is the
dissension of other things. It is disparity" (1977 142), then the jumble of things found at
the base of this project consists of books (and yet more books) and an organizing
intelligence whose own style of contemplation is no exemplum of rationality, linearity or
focus. The foundational books comprise two handfuls of novels—some twenty seven
hundred pages of fiction—published by Peter Ackroyd between 1982 and 1999, as well as
a much smaller handful of critical work that has begun to examine, analyze, classify and
situate these novels as exhibiting X, belonging to Y or truly being an instance of Z.
Contiguous with these latter pages are related fields of studies with whose tradition they
engage and with which they partake in a mode of dialogue.
While the ten novels may be said to represent or embody cases of X, Y or Z, even
the scantiest of knowledge of theories of the novel genre—as promulgated by as disparate
(and arbitrarily selected) a set of writers as Bakhtin, Leavis, Girard, Goldmann, Lukacs
and Watt—will point to the complex polyvocality of the genre, and hint in turn at what
might be called the genre's irreducibility, if not uncontainability. Of course, such an
uncontainability would appear instantly to work against systemizing gestures typically
enacted by critics. Though this study takes as axiomatic the fundamental irreducibility of
the genre, it certainly does not disavow the possibility of productive discussion of traits,
tropes and tendencies in individual novels or, indeed, an entire oeuvre. What it aims to
dismantle (at least partially), however, is an ever-popular encapsulating approach to works
of fiction whose principal effect is to securely situate a work within a stable
tradition—though often at the cost of simplifying both work and tradition. Criticism of the
novels published by Peter Ackroyd is just one instance of this popular critical tendency. To
posit—as many have—that "Peter Ackroyd is a writer of postmodern fiction," for instance,
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