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Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the Novels of Peter Ackroyd

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Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the Novels of Peter Ackroyd ENCOUNTERING 'THIS SEASON'S RETRIEVAL': HISTORICAL FICTION, LITERARY POSTMODERNISM AND THE NOVELS OF PETER ACKROYD by BRETT JOSEF GRUBISIC B.A., University of Victoria, 1992 M.A., University of Victoria, 1994 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA July 2001 © Brett Josef Grubisic, 2001 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date DE-6 (2/88) Abstract "Encountering 'this season's retrieval': Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the Novels of Peter Ackroyd" engages the novels Peter Ackroyd has published, and situates them within broader generic considerations and critical dialogue. Part I, an extended prefatorial apparatus, places Ackroyd and his published fiction within three historico- critical contexts: the problem of author-as-reliable-source and the disparate histories of (a) the historical novel and (b) postmodernism in general (and literary postmodernism in particular). By interrogating the histories and points-of-contention of these areas, this Part aims to problematize critical discourse enveloping Ackroyd's fiction. Part II, comprised of four chapters, discusses specific groupings of Ackroyd's novels. After providing an overview of relevant aspects of the novels and their reception by critics, Chapter A, "Moulding History with Pastiche in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America." considers the multiple functioning of pastiche—often considered a mainstay postmodern implement—in Ackroyd's work. The chapter concludes that rather than achieving a singular effect in the novels, pastiche works in divergent manners and confounds the reading of past historical actuality they ostensibly represent. Chapter B, "The Presence of the Past: Comedic and Non-Realist Historicism in The Great Fire of London and First Light." provides an overview of relevant aspects of the novels, and then analyzes how the presence of comedy in otherwise sombre historical fiction interrupts the realism of the narrative. This chapter argues that while camp comic effects disrupt the authority of quasi-historiographic techniques they cannot fully subvert realism and so create a suspensive modality. Chapter C, "PastlPresent: The Uses of History in Hawksmoor. Chatterton. The House of Doctor Dee and English Music." interrogates elements of the past-present fugue trajectories of these novels in order to problematize schematic readings of their supposed cultural politics. ii Finally, Chapter D, "Those Conventional Concluding Remarks: The Plato Papers. (National) History and Politics," places Ackroyd's most recent novel (one uncharacteristically set in the future) within the preoccupations of his earlier fiction. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of future scholarship that would investigate the national Englishness constructed throughout Ackroyd's biographical and novelistic work. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Part I: The Prefatory and the Introductory; or, The Situation of the Novel(ist), in Consideration of Authorship and the Potted, Contentious Histories of Historical Fiction and (Literary) Postmodernism 1. Portrait of the Artist as Multiplicitous Simultaneity 4 The Author Mediated Mediated self-representation (i)—Writer-as-revolutionary Mediated self-representation (ii)—Novelist-as-(fraudulent)-historian Mediated self-representation (iii)—rWriter-as-provocateur/trickster/liar Mediated self-representation (iv)—Writer-as-English-mystic Mediated self-representation (v)—Writer-as-conservative/non- postmodernist Mediated identity (i)—Ackroyd-as-enigma Mediated identity (ii)—Ackroyd-as-contradictory-mess/fraud Mediated identity (iii)—Ackroyd-as-postmodernist 27 Politics and Historical Fiction: Unearthing the Past with Fictions 21 (i) The Historical Novel: Past (ii) The Historical Novel: Present (a) The Post-War Novel (b) The Post-War Historical Novel (c) Naming the Prodigy (d) The Prodigy in Perspective 3. The Politics of Postmodernism: Framing the Debate 48 (i) What Do We Mean When We Talk About Postmodernism? (ii) What Do We Mean When We Talk About Postmodern Fiction? (iii) Linda Hutcheon: The Use and Abuse of Postmodernism (iv) Shaking Foundations?: Hutcheon's Historiographic Metafiction 4. Novel Situation 81 Part II: Novel Re-Situations A. Moulding History with Pastiche in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America 90 1. Historical Novel Traditions Revisited 91 2rSituating The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America 96 (i) Aspects of the Novels iv (ii) Critical Reception 3. "allusions that lead nowhere'V'the culture of pastiche" 115 4. Ackroyd's Acts of Pastiche 126 (a) Wilde Versus Milton: Figural Revisions 130 (b) The Marxs, Gissing, Babbage: Historical Bit Players 140 B. The Presence of the Past: Comedic and Non-Realist Historicism in The Great Fire of London and First Light 145 1. History Through a Comic Frame 146 2. Situating The Great Fire of London and First Light 149 (i) Aspects of the Novels (ii) Critical Reception 3. Camp Comedic Historicism 166 (i) The Comedy Effect (ii) Camp: c'est quoi 9a (iii) Reading Camp in First Light and The Great Fire of London 4. Effecting "extreme artificiality": A Note on 'Non-Realist Historicism' 189 C. PastlPresent: The Uses of History in Hawksmoor, Chatterton. The House of Doctor Dee and English Music 195 1. History-Telling, Category Making 196 2. Situating Hawksmoor, Chatterton. The House of Doctor Dee and English Music 198 (i) Aspects of the Novels (ii) Critical Reception 3. History: Inside and Outside the Story 227 (i) History Within the Worlds of the Novels (a) What Sort of Exemplar is Timothy Harcombe? (b) A Premature Death (c) Two Cases of Sudden Disappearance (ii) History/Novels/Audiences 243 D. Those Conventional Concluding Remarks: The Plato Papers. (National) History and Politics 255 Works Cited 268 v Encountering 'this season's retrieval': Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the Novels of Peter Ackroyd Parti: The Prefatory and the Introductory; or, The Situation of the Novel(ist), in Consideration of Authorship and the Potted, Contentious Histories of Historical Fiction and (Literary) Postmodernism 2 Why A Historical? There are many aspects of writing historical fiction, many problems and many challenges. Some of these are common to all types of writing, others are particular to the genre. A historical can be every bit as gripping a read as a contemporary novel, and may be even more so. An outstanding one will linger in the minds of its readers for many years: Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, one of many notable first novels, is a classic example. But, far from being easier to write than contemporary fiction, it must be faced that historicals are, arguably, more demanding. So let us look at some of the reasons which tempt us to have a go. Not Because It Looks Easier—It's Not A historical novel may look like an easy option ... Rhona Martin, Writing Historical Fiction [a guide] 3 If, as a translated Michel Foucault contended in 1971, "[w]hat is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origins; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity" (1977 142), then the jumble of things found at the base of this project consists of books (and yet more books) and an organizing intelligence whose own style of contemplation is no exemplum of rationality, linearity or focus. The foundational books comprise two handfuls of novels—some twenty seven hundred pages of fiction—published by Peter Ackroyd between 1982 and 1999, as well as a much smaller handful of critical work that has begun to examine, analyze, classify and situate these novels as exhibiting X, belonging to Y or truly being an instance of Z. Contiguous with these latter pages are related fields of studies with whose tradition they engage and with which they partake in a mode of dialogue. While the ten novels may be said to represent or embody cases of X, Y or Z, even the scantiest of knowledge of theories of the novel genre—as promulgated by as disparate (and arbitrarily selected) a set of writers as Bakhtin, Leavis, Girard, Goldmann, Lukacs and Watt—will point to the complex polyvocality of the genre, and hint in turn at what might be called the genre's irreducibility, if not uncontainability. Of course, such an uncontainability would appear instantly to work against systemizing gestures typically enacted by critics. Though this study takes as axiomatic the fundamental irreducibility of the genre, it certainly does not disavow the possibility of productive discussion of traits, tropes and tendencies in individual novels or, indeed, an entire oeuvre. What it aims to dismantle (at least partially), however, is an ever-popular encapsulating approach to works of fiction whose principal effect is to securely situate a work within a stable tradition—though often at the cost of simplifying both work and tradition. Criticism of the novels published by Peter Ackroyd is just one instance of this popular critical tendency. To posit—as many have—that "Peter Ackroyd is a writer of postmodern fiction," for instance, 4 requires an extraordinarily selective reading of Ackroyd's novels as well as a feasible working model of the notoriously and hugely ambiguous term, "postmodern." That kind of critical system-building entails distortion and suppression, and as such requires no small degree of scepticism.
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