At the Edge of History: Notes for a Theory for the Historical Novel in Latin America

Abstract

This paper presents a theory for the historical novel in general, and for the late twentieth-century Latin American historical novel in particular. Drawing on the theories proposed by Manzoni, Lukács, Alonso and Menton, this paper argues that the historical novel, rather than a genre with a fixed number of attributes, is a 'mode of writing' that creates and maintains tension between fiction and the agreed-upon historical record. By creating a productive tension between the reader's knowledge of the past — or 'historical competency' — and fiction, the historical novel makes the reader aware of the difficulty of deciding where history ends and where fiction begins. This difficulty, which is a moment of hesitation, produces in turn 'historiographical consciousness' — the awareness that history is amendable, partial, and ultimately culturally produced. © 2008 Maney Publishing.