Historiographic Metafiction

Terms:

History vs. Historiography

Self-Reflexivity and Metafiction

Realism and Metafiction

Historical Fiction

Setting

Characters

Themes

History as Force: The Deterministic View

The Past and the Present

Historical Narrative and the Individual

Metafiction:

Origins and Sources

Oral Tradition: The Storyteller

Oral Techniques in Fiction: The Self-Conscious Narrator

Artifice and the Artificial

Postmodernism and the Realist Novel

Elements and Techniques: Foregrounding of Artifice

Artist as Character/Protagonist

Writing as Process

Composition of the Text

Theme: Unreliability

History, Historiography, and Fiction:

History and Canadian Identity

Official vs. Non-Official History

Documents and History

History in/and Fiction: The Fragments and Narrative Technique

Timothy Findley:

Biography

Themes:

Violence

Evil

Insanity: The Thin Line

Binaries and Paradoxes

The Wars

Structure

Characters

Themes:

Wars

Human/Non-Human

Madness

Vision

Gender: Identity and Roles

Motifs and Symbols:

The Four Elements

Horses, Birds

Private and Public