The Renaissance Historical Novel: Elizabethan and Jacobean Historical Fiction

文艺复兴时期的历史小说：伊丽莎白一世和詹姆士一世时期的历史小说

• 批准号: AH/E003389/1
• 负责人: Alexander Davis
• 金额: $ 3.09万
• 依托单位: University of St Andrews
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE003389%2F1
• 关键词: Renaissance; Historical; Novel; Elizabethan; Jacobean

This is not a study of contemporary fiction set in the Renaissance. It is a study of prose fiction from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that is set in the past. My aim is to examine the ways in which these fictions might operate like a modern historical novel, by providing a chronologically distinct setting that comprises some part of the overall significance of or pleasure afforded by the story. Perhaps a majority of the fiction composed in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is set in the past. Lodge, Sidney, Nashe, Deloney: all the major prose writers of the period produced historical fiction, with settings ranging from the ancient world (as in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia') to the relatively recent past (the time of Henry VIII, in Nashe's 'The Unfortunate Traveller'). One might go so far as to say that it was fiction with a contemporary setting that was unusual at this time. Yet this historical bias has so far escaped any sort of sustained critical consideration. For the most part, the unexpressed assumption seems to be that if a prose fiction published in 1578 opens by declaring that it is set 'after that the great Emperour Constantine had people of Constantinople with the race of the noble Citizens of Rome', as Margaret Tyler's translation of 'The Mirror of Knighthood' does, this is as much as to say, 'once upon a time ...', and that any such historical gesture is therefore essentially neutral. This study will argue the opposite: that it is not, or at least not necessarily so, and therefore to ask the question: how does Renaissance prose fiction respond to and represent the fact of historical difference?This is a literary-critical project, and as such it aims to promote a heightened appreciation of the artistry of early modern prose fiction, but it is also one designed to open out into a consideration of larger historical questions. How do writers of fiction understand the past, and how do they put it to use in their fictions? What do their fictions have to tell us about the historical culture of the period of their composition, as opposed to the period in which they are set? Is the historical vision of early modern fiction distinct from that evident in formal historical writing of the period? How might this historical sense relate to larger questions of periodization, given that the Renaissance is so often characterised by an improved understanding of the classical past in particular? And, finally, how does the historical culture of the early modern period resemble or differ from our own? This last question affords the opportunity of a comparison between early modern and contemporary forms of historical knowledge, via the literary formats that might encode them. If the fact that the majority of early prose fiction is set in the past has never received any substantial critical discussion, the same might be said of its modern analogue. The historical novel is one of the most popular of literary forms, and one of the least studied. Some seventy years after its composition, Lukacs' work remains one of the few monographs devoted to the genre. This absence becomes all the more noteworthy when one considers the 'postmodern' fascination with historiographic issues of mediation and representation, its penchant for detailing the multiple, alternative and in some sense imaginary pasts that populate the present. A contemporary political history like Toby Judt's 'Postwar' almost inevitably organises itself around a metahistorical theme, of how historical progress may be marked or even driven by successive reconfigurations of the past. One aspect of this modern self-consciousness would be to reconstruct different, past ways of imagining history, the better thereby to understand ourselves in our own distinctive modes of knowledge; and this, through my specifically literary theme, which offers the possibility of such comparisions, is exactly what I am proposing here.

这不是对文艺复兴时期的当代小说的研究。这是一个研究的散文小说从16世纪和17世纪初是设置在过去。我的目的是通过提供一个按时间顺序排列的独特背景，来考察这些小说可能像现代历史小说一样运作的方式，这个背景包含了故事的整体意义或故事所提供的乐趣的一部分。也许16、17世纪英国的大部分小说都以过去为背景。洛奇、西德尼、纳什、德洛尼：这一时期所有主要的散文作家都创作了历史小说，背景从古代世界（如菲利普·西德尼爵士的《阿卡迪亚》）到相对较近的过去（纳什的《不幸的旅行者》中的亨利八世时代）。有人甚至可以说，这是一部以当代为背景的小说，在当时是不寻常的。然而，迄今为止，这种历史偏见没有得到任何形式的持续批判性考虑。在大多数情况下，未表达的假设似乎是，如果一部1578年出版的散文小说开篇就宣称它的背景是“在伟大的君士坦丁大帝让君士坦丁堡的人民与高贵的罗马公民种族”之后，就像玛格丽特泰勒翻译的《身份之镜》一样，这就等于说，“很久很久以前......因此，任何这样的历史姿态基本上都是中立的。本研究将论证相反的观点：事实并非如此，或者至少不一定如此，因此要提出这样一个问题：文艺复兴时期的散文小说如何回应和代表历史差异的事实？这是一个文学批评项目，因此，它旨在促进早期现代散文小说的艺术性的高度赞赏，但它也是一个旨在打开到更大的历史问题的考虑。小说家如何理解过去，又如何在小说中加以运用？他们的小说告诉了我们什么关于他们创作时期的历史文化，而不是他们所处的时代？早期现代小说的历史视野与那个时期的正式历史写作明显不同吗？鉴于文艺复兴的特点往往是对古典时代的理解有所提高，这种历史感与更大的分期问题有什么关系？最后，近代早期的历史文化与我们的历史文化有何相似或不同？这最后一个问题提供了一个机会，通过可能编码它们的文学格式，比较早期现代和当代形式的历史知识。如果说大多数早期散文小说都是以过去为背景的，这一事实从未得到任何实质性的批评讨论，那么它的现代类似物也可以说是如此。历史小说是最受欢迎的文学形式之一，也是研究最少的文学形式之一。大约70年后，它的组成，卢卡奇的工作仍然是为数不多的专着致力于体裁之一。当人们考虑到“后现代”对调解和再现的历史编纂问题的迷恋时，这种缺席变得更加值得注意，它倾向于详细描述充斥在现在的多重、替代性和某种意义上的想象性过去。像托比·朱特（Toby Judt）的《战后》（Postwar）这样的当代政治史几乎不可避免地围绕着一个元历史主题来组织自己，即历史进步如何被过去的连续重新配置所标记，甚至驱动。这种现代自我意识的一个方面是重建过去想象历史的不同方式，从而更好地理解我们自己独特的知识模式;这正是我在这里提出的，通过我的特定文学主题，它提供了这种比较的可能性。

项目成果

Renaissance Historical Fiction: Sidney, Deloney, Nashe

文艺复兴时期历史小说：西德尼、德洛尼、纳什

• 发表时间: 2011
• 作者: Davis Dr Alex