Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions

247 Pages·2015·1.52 MB·English

by  Jerome De Groot

REMAKING HISTORY
Remaking History considers the ways that historical fictions of all kinds enable a
complex engagement with the past. Popular historical texts, including films,
television and novels, along with cultural phenomena such as superheroes and
vampires, broker relationships to ‘history’, while also enabling audiences to
understand the ways in which the past is written, structured and ordered.
Jerome de Groot uses examples from contemporary popular culture to show
the relationship between fiction and history in two key ways. Firstly, the texts
pedagogically contribute to the historical imaginary and secondly, they allow
reflection upon how the past is constructed as ‘history’. In doing so, they provide
an accessible and engaging means to critique, conceptualize and reject the processes
of historical representation. The book looks at the use of the past in fiction from
sources including Mad Men, Downton Abbey and Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn,
along with the work of directors such as Terrence Malick, Quentin Tarantino and
Martin Scorsese, to show that fictional representations enable a comprehension of
the fundamental strangeness of the past and the ways in which this foreign, exotic
other is constructed.
Drawing from popular films, novels and TV series of recent years, and engaging
with key thinkers from Marx to Derrida, Remaking History is a must for all students
interested in the meaning that history has for fiction, and vice versa.
Jerome de Groot is Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester. He is
the author of The Historical Novel (2009), Consuming History (2008), and Royalist
Identities (Palgrave, 2004).
This page intentionally left blank
REMAKING
HISTORY
The past in contemporary
historical fictions
Jerome de Groot
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Jerome de Groot
The right of Jerome de Groot to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Groot, Jerome, 1975–
Remaking history: the past in contemporary historical fictions /
Jerome de Groot.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Historical fiction – History and criticism. 2. Literature and history.
3. History in literature. I. Title.
PN3441.D44 2015
809.3′81 – dc23
2015003903
ISBN: 978-0-415-85877-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-85878-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69339-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
This one’s for Ariadne
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements xi
Permissions xiii
Introduction: Perverting history 1
Part I: Ethics, politics, and nationalism 11
1 Reading and ethics 13
Trusting the historical novel 13
Wolf Hall and the ‘double effect’ of historical fiction 22
Historical fiction and ethics 30
War, blood, guts: Combat and violence in mass-market novels 37
2 Challenging national histories 49
Discussion and origins: Jimmy’s Hall 51
Disrupting pioneer myths: The Western 53
This Is England 61
Mad Men and the illusions of History 70
Part II: Haunting, ghostliness, and the undead 87
3 The materiality of the past 89
Smoking, pastness, and memory in historical film and television 91
viii Contents
Pursuing smoke 99
Smoking in Mad Men 103
Rings as things and non-things 105
Remnants and mourning 108
4 The problem of time and the return of the dead 117
Horrible history 120
Shuffling into history: Zombies 124
Humanness and temporality: The vampire 129
Modern times 132
Time and magic and narrative: Hugo 139
Part III: Pleasure, affect, and performance 149
5 Pleasure and desire 151
Enjoying popular history 151
Downton Abbey, escapism, and passivity 153
Costume and the self-conscious pleasure of the text 159
Misery programming 162
Laughing at the past 166
Lost in Austen, the gaze, and the pleasures of the text 170
Historical exploitation 174
6 Performance and affect 189
The Red Riding Trilogy, smoke, ethics, and performance 192
Anne Boleyn, drag history, and the body of the past 204
Hunger: Authenticity and abjection 211
Conclusions 223
Index 229
FIGURES
2.1 Meek’s Cutoff 59
2.2 This Is England ’88, Episode 1 67
2.3 Stephen Graham in This Is England 69
2.4 Falling man from the opening sequence of Mad Men 78
2.5 Final logo of the opening sequence of Mad Men 79
3.1 Smoking in Hunger 96
3.2 A Single Man 97
5.1 The Tudorspublicity shot 177
5.2 Fighting and muscles in Spartacus 178
6.1 Red Riding: 1983 194
6.2 Red Riding: 1983 196
6.3 Red Riding: 1983 196
6.4 Red Riding: 1980 202
6.5 Miranda Raison in Anne Boleyn(2010) 206
6.6 Sands collapses, Hunger 218