Between History and Fiction: The Author’s Responsibility to Historical Fiction, And The Rainbow Man - A novel

This thesis contains a work of historical fiction followed by a critical essay exploring the aspect of responsibility in historical fiction through the lenses of familial storytelling, memory, trauma memory, and collective memory. The historical novel produced is a variant of historiographic metafiction combined with the mode of a memory novel. My critical investigation has led me to explore creatively writing history through differing perspectives of memory. In Chapter One of the critical essay, I outline the differences between history and historical fiction, of how the past is presented and the definitions of what we consider history and fiction to be. Chapter Two investigates the term historical fiction, and engages with the emerging subgenres of historical fiction; examining the perceived responsibility of historical fiction authors, positing different conceptions of such. Chapter Three is concerned with the lenses through which we choose to view the past, those of familial storytelling, memory, trauma memory, and the collective memory, and how the utilisation of these lenses influences the mode of historical fiction. In Chapter Four, I discuss how these lenses are translated through literary devices, and how this impacts not only the genre, but the form itself; challenging the distinctive definitions of form by showing how they can overlap. The author's responsibility to the genre of historical fiction, I conclude, lies in how she chooses to view the past. I propose that this responsibility is shaped through the specific lenses she employs to render a complete picture of her story to a reader. Through the investigation of writing history through differing perspectives of memory, the genre of historical fiction expands into a possible variety of subgenres, including that of a variant of historiographic metafiction combined with the mode of memory novel, thus adding to historical understanding