This thesis focuses on three texts that turn the narrativization of history into the substance of their plots in an effort to consider the relationship between historical representation and the novel as a narrative form. At once a technology for refracting and inventing reality, the novel fabulates in order to generate a representation of something real. Each of the texts the thesis examines—William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1904), and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013)—presents not only a hardened account of the past, but instead the process by which that account is composed. The chapters of the thesis try to tease out the philosophies of history operative in the form and content of each text, expressed through the premise of its narrative structure, the convictions of its characters, and the subtle movements of its discursive expressions. Though each text's configuration of historical representation is unique, as are its historical conditions, when read together they afford us an opportunity to consider the novel itself as a theory or form of history-writing.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Narrative","The novel","History"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33878