The Postcolonial Historical Novel : Realism, Allegory, and the Representation of Contested Pasts.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Note on the Text -- Part I: Epistemologies of Historical Realism -- 1 The Contemporary Postcolonial Historical Novel: Beyond Anti-Realism -- 2 Allegorical Realism: Toward a Poetics of the Postcolonial Historical Novel -- Part II: Allegories of Settlement -- 3 Typification and Frontier Violence: Kate Grenville's The Secret River -- 4 The Gender of Settler Realism: Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife -- Part III: Narrating Transnational Histories -- 5 Deterritorialising Allegorical Realism: Witi Ihimaera's The Trowenna Sea -- 6 Aesthetics of Absent Causality: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun -- Part IV: Melancholy Realisms -- 7 Spectres of Civil War Trauma: Chris Abani's Song for Night -- 8 Metafictional Realism and the Dialectic of Allegory: Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish -- 9 Conclusion: the Historical Novel, from Postcolonial Reconciliation to Environmental Crisis -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index.

The Postcolonial Historical Novel is the first systematic work to examine how the historical novel has been transformed by its appropriation in postcolonial writing. It proposes new ways to understand literary realism, and explores how the relationship between history and fiction plays out in contemporary African and Australasian writing.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.