An experimental analysis on reading historical narrative as literary artefact: A metahistorical analysis of Manu S. Pillai's Rebel Sultans

Abstract

‘Isotoria’, the Greek term for history defines history as an enquiry or an exploration of archives and historical evidence. But it is through the narrative part that the historical imagination of the historian is transferred. Hence the process of writing of history involves a scientific and creative procedure. The creative part of historiography is centred on the ‘historical narrative’ which makes the core of this study. The primary text selected for the study is Rebel Sultans authored by Manu S. Pillai. The study tries to trace the narrative strategies that enabled the author to convert historical evidence into a proper historical narrative. The theoretical framework adopted for the analysis comes from Metahistory: Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, the seminal work of the American historiographer Hayden White, published in 1973. The study analyses the process of construction of the narrative of Rebel Sultans based on the five levels of conceptualisation proposed by Hayden White such as chronicles, story, mode of emplotement, mode of argument and mode of ideology.