DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2663-4619/125/59-63
Shabnam Khalilzade
Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University
Foreign Languages Center
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5130-5723
khalilzade90@inbox.ru
The Role of Historical Reality in George Saunders’s Works
Abstract
In recent years, a number of scholars have produced monographs and edited collections of articles on historical literature written in contemporary English, reflecting the significance of the genre and its increasing appeal to diverse groups of readers.
The historical novel, within its broad generic framework, also encompasses various forms such as alternative histories, time-slip novels, historical fantasy, and pseudo-histories. To these analyses, we may also add the neo-historical novel as a recent development.
In his novel Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders departs from the conventions of the traditional novel by creating a new, individualized mode of speech for each character. In doing so, he employs techniques characteristic of stage plays or screenplays. A character speaks first, and then, at the end of the sentence, the character’s name appears, as if the line were being presented as a quotation. Saunders frequently applies this technique to quotations drawn from actual historical books and documents.
Saunders does not present the events that took place during the American Civil War directly; instead, he conveys them indirectly, through suggestion and allusion. Through this work, the author challenges conventional ideas about how history is constructed and culturally transmitted, and by particularly destabilizing the concept of a coherent historical narrative, he compels the reader to reconsider earlier assumptions about mid-nineteenth-century American history and the formation of national identity.
Keywords: American history, historical novel, Abraham Lincoln, racial discrimination, neo-historical novel