Examines recent developments in historical fiction, with particular attention to the way contemporary writers have portrayed Shakespearean England.
Taking its title from Umberto Eco's postscript to The Name of the Rose, the novel that inaugurated the New Historical Fiction in the early 1980s, Constructing the World provides a guide to the genre's defining characteristics. It also serves as a lively account of the way Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I, and their contemporaries have been depicted by such writers as Anthony Burgess, George Garrett, Patricia Finney, Barry Unsworth, and Rosalind Miles. Innovative historical novels written during the past two or three decades have transformed the genre, producing some extraordinary bestsellers as well as less widely read serious fiction. Shakespearean scholar Martha Tuck Rozett engages in an ongoing conversation about the genre of historical fiction, drawing attention to the metacommentary contained in "Afterwords" or "Historical Notes"; the imaginative reconstruction of the diction and mentality of the past; the way Shakespearean phrases, names, and themes are appropriated; and the counterfactual scenarios writers invent as they reinvent the past.
| ISBN: | 9780791455524 |
| Publication date: | 24th October 2002 |
| Author: | Martha Tuck Rozett |
| Publisher: | SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 206 pages |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: plays and playwrights Historiography Literary theory |
Examines recent developments in historical fiction, with particular attention to the way contemporary writers have portrayed Shakespearean England.
Taking its title from Umberto Eco's postscript to The Name of the Rose, the novel that inaugurated the New Historical Fiction in the early 1980s, Constructing the World provides a guide to the genre's defining characteristics. It also serves as a lively account of the way Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I, and their contemporaries have been depicted by such writers as Anthony Burgess, George Garrett, Patricia Finney, Barry Unsworth, and Rosalind Miles. Innovative historical novels written during the past two or three decades have transformed the genre, producing some extraordinary bestsellers as well as less widely read serious fiction. Shakespearean scholar Martha Tuck Rozett engages in an ongoing conversation about the genre of historical fiction, drawing attention to the metacommentary contained in "Afterwords" or "Historical Notes"; the imaginative reconstruction of the diction and mentality of the past; the way Shakespearean phrases, names, and themes are appropriated; and the counterfactual scenarios writers invent as they reinvent the past.
Constructing a World features in the following genres: Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Historiography, Literary theory
Constructing a World is available in Paperback
Constructing a World was written by Martha Tuck Rozett and published by SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press
Constructing a World has 206 pages