History and the Novel

Examining the historical and social geography of a nation requires studying the time and the space so as to give rise to a discourse exploring how people interact with each other as well as with their nation. Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope unveils how the inter/trans textual and contextual relationships of narrative time and space intersect with historical moments to generate interactive involvement with certain temporal and geographical scales in the real world. Discussing the chronotopicity of a society is also associated with Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of metanarratives (aka grand narratives); his ideologies are complementary to Bakhtin's use of the chronotope as an analytical lens; theirs is an inter/trans discourse. The paper seeks to underline the interactive inter/trans discourse between reality and literary narratives from an intertwined Bakhtinian and Lyotardian approach. The article also attempts to accentuate the homogeneity of the concepts of the chronotope and metanarrative because an interactive chronotopic-metanarrative approach facilitates involvement with the reality and makes the oscillation between the fictional and the real possible.

Аннотация. В центре внимания автора – российско-европейские отношения через призму двух типов политики: аксиологического, характеризующегося инструментальностью, категоричностью, монологичностью и идеологичностью, и диалогового, в рамках которого ключевое значение имеет качество политических отношений и плюрализм типов участия в политическом процессе. Отдельное внимание в статье уделяется концептуальным основаниям политики диалога и соотношению двух типов политики при различных политических режимах.

The image of Biafra as a space of belonging has assumed currency in contemporary secessionist discourse. Wartime Biafran society is framed as a utopia where everyone belonged and felt safe. Consequently, this framing has birthed a robust following among Igbo youths who desperately seek an alternative to the ‘unfriendly’ Nigerian space. This deployment of memory/remembrance stirs up a need to question how people belonged within Biafra as well as the dimensions of violence that being ‘an outsider within’ might have created during the war. Thus, this thesis examines the representation of un/belonging in Biafra in selected literary texts to map the violence and layers of exclusion which the politics of belonging generates. This is to map and listen to those marginal voices that often ‘fall through the cracks’ in the war’s historicity. I employ Nira Yuval-Davis’s situated intersectionality as my methodological anchor in teasing out the unique experiences of vulnerable ‘Biafrans’ who were differently located within the wartime society as ‘outsiders within’ due to their ethnicity, gender, age, ability/disability, sexuality and class. I pay attention to the ways in which the interaction of these axes of identity creates characters whose fraught narratives of unbelonging spill outside the binary narrative frame of Nigeria-Biafra which is mostly deployed in writing and reading popular histories of the conflict. My reading is further moored to Nira-Yuval Davis’ conception of the politics of belonging and Homi Bhabha’s idea of third space. I position literary texts as my canvas in engaging with Biafra and Biafranness due to the poignant way fictional narratives represent private suffering. I read nine fictional narratives and two memoirs to curate a conversation between literature and history as ‘cotexts.’ Memoirs are selected across victims/hegemons divide to question the politics of memory and remembrance. I have selected texts written by erstwhile Biafrans due to the intimate manner in which they narrate the Biafran experience, and to facilitate my aim of listening to Biafran voices and stories. My aim is to get a more nuanced reading of the ‘Biafran’ experience by bringing the victims into conversation with the power brokers in wartime Biafra. The study finds that the unavowed narratives of Biafra that are trapped within the binary approach are revelatory of the excess which plagues most hegemonic accounts of the war. Within these stories from in-between, which I have framed as third space stories, Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za iv the idea of Biafra as a homely space is unsettled to reveal the multiple forms of violence deployed against characters caught at the margins of belligerent positions in order to police belonging, ensure dogmatic solidarity, and to smelt a linear Biafran identity. These stories that emerge from the interstices of the Nigeria-Biafra dichotomy indicate that adopting an intersectional frame in thinking about the civil war produces a much more nuanced encounter with Biafra. More importantly, the voices that come to light within this mode of reading speak of excess and absences in a way that calls attention to an unfinished business of mourning and healing. They speak of a 'lack of return' in the post-war moment, and of a continuity of trauma which is tied to a ruptured sense of belonging. These voices, and the stories they tell, also reveal that by creating spaces for narrative engagements where speaking and listening can thrive, unencumbered by hagiographical histories, a measure of belonging could blossom

Réflexion sur les romans de Robin Verner, Au nom de quoi ?, Sucy-en-Brie, Editions Anfortas, 2019, et de Jacques Ravenne, La Chute. Les derniers jours de Robespierre, Paris, Perrin Plon, 2019. Il faut rappeler les exigences et les responsabilités qui pèsent sur les épaules des auteurs, quels qu’ils soient. C’est à ce prix que Robespierre ne sera pas trop cabossé et qu’il continuera à être étudié et connu sans trop de déformations.

This article sets Pedro de Corral’s Crónica Sarracina against the background of
the true-to-life chivalric fiction which was produced in the courts of Bourgogne
and Anjou, and was often related to dinastic legends. It reveals the first documents
found about the novelist Pedro de Corral, which are dated between 1422
and 1444, and located in the Arxiu de la Corona de Aragó and the Arxiu del Regne
de València. They all present Corral as a server of the Infante John of Aragon
and Diego Gómez de Sandoval, Count of Castro. As well, several documents
reveal that Corral sometimes acted as a trusted messenger in the presence of King
Alfonso of Aragon.

Losing his job as a history teacher causes the narrator and protagonist of Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983) to reflect on the past and chronicle the death of a local boy during his teenage years. In doing so, Tom Crick also offers what seems to be a redeeming account of his paternal family’s role in the Fens, the land dominated over the centuries by his maternal ancestors, the Atkinsons. In telling their story, however, he exercises the same exclusion that once relegated the Cricks to the historical periphery. Self-appointed family chronicler, Crick imposes narrative representation as the only way to exert one’s historical agency. Yet his half-brother Dick’s suicide, which emerges as an impenetrable silence, brings the account to an abrupt end, revealing the representational inadequacy of Crick’s project of historical restoration while, ironically, inaugurating a new horizon of possibility for the narrator’s life.

The Dictionnaire Robespierre, Lexicométrie et usages langagiers. Outils pour une histoire du lexique de l'Incorruptible, tome I (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2015), is the product of a team of Italian historians working on the French Revolution in the department of social sciences at the University of Trieste. It presents itself as a print edition of a work-in-progress. Utilizing the digital technology of computational linguistics, this paper dictionary aims to provide provisional yet useful information to scholars working on the French Revolution and Robespierre as they await a comprehensive and fully accessible digitalized database of documents related to printed materials from the French Revolution and the reign of Terror. While Stanford University has now entirely digitized the Archives Parlementaires, the members of the University of Trieste have focused on publishing print editions of lexicographical studies of key Revolutionary terms and concepts. Cesare Vetter, one of the three researchers behind volume one of the Dictionnaire Robespierre has published two volumes on La felicità è un'idea nuova in Europa (in collaboration with Elisabetta Gon and Marco Marin, who are also the co-authors of the dictionary). The Robespierre dictionary aims to facilitate the study of Revolutionary historiography by providing empirical data on word-clusters deployed by Robespierre in his public speeches and writings. A " linguistic turn " is arguably central to gaining a full understanding of the tenor of Robespierre's ideas and can correct some interpretations of Robespierre's political thought that have resulted in what the dictionary authors deem to be vital misunderstandings in Robespierrist studies: namely, the reputation of a terroristic Robespierre who denies individuality to citizen-subjects and who evades the issue of women's role in French society, as well as questions of gender. In fact, the qualitative data yielded by the scientific study of Robespierre's vocabulary demonstrates the importance of the concept of happiness in the politician's thought (491 occurrences identified in the eleven volumes of Robespierre's OEuvres), and helpfully tracks the references to " liberté des femmes " and usages of figures of the maternal in Robespierre's political speeches. The authors grant that this reference work best serves as a modest launching pad rather than a destination point for scholarly enquiries that would deepen historical studies on Robespierre by paying stylistic attention to the emotive modulations of Robespierre's rhetoric and to the study of political contexts. The Dictionary also does not investigate Robespierre's private writings, which could lend an alternative light to his public addresses, but it does include an introductory essay on the importance of the notion of private existence and the individual in Robespierre's meditations on human happiness. The reference book positions itself as entering into fruitful synergy with recent Anglo-American scholarship on the Revolutionary period. For instance, it can provide qualitative corroboration of Marisa Linton's recent insights into the importance of friendship in French revolutionary moral culture and

Tο πιο πρόσφατο μυθιστόρημα της Μάρως Δούκα με τίτλο Έλα να πούμε ψέματα (2014) θεωρώ ότι μιλάει για το σήμερα της κρίσης και αποτελεί ένα πολύ ώριμο δείγμα μυθιστορηματικής γραφής και ταυτόχρονα μία απάντηση στη δυσκολία της σύγχρονης ελληνικής πεζογραφίας να μιλήσει αποτελεσματικά για την κρίση. Για την ίδια την Δούκα τα «ψέματα» του παρελθόντος μιλούν «με σαφήνεια ή υπαινικτικά» και για το προβληματικό σήμερα της κρίσης, της οικονομικής, ανθρωπιστικής, ιδεολογικής, πολιτικής κ.λπ.: «αυτό το βιβλίο, όπως και τα δυο προηγούμενα της τριλογίας, δεν θα φιλοδοξούσα να το γράψω, αν ‘στόχος’ μου δεν ήταν να μιλήσω και για το προβληματικό σήμερα ‘της κρίσης’ μέσα από το συσκοτισμένο, παραποιημένο, αποσιωπημένο παρελθόν... Εξάλλου, παρελθόν-παρόν (με όλα τα χαρακτηριστικά της δύσκολης, αδιέξοδης συχνά, καθημερινότητας) στο σώμα του βιβλίου σχεδόν ισομοιράζονται...» (από προσωπική ηλεκτρονική επιστολή στις 27/7/2016).

This paper is about the postmodern theory of history and its connection with the representation of the Holocaust. The postmodern theory of history appeared at first in the Hayden White’s book Metahistory, the historical Imagination in nineteenth-century Europe. White’s claim that the historical scientific text has no difference in its structure than any literature text (“linguistic turn”) has resulted in an interesting debate about history and historiography. This critique on classical historiography has been codified by Frank Ankersmit, who distinguished the historical text between facts and narrative substances, whereas Keith Jenkins has claimed that history is no longer useful as it cannot objectively represent the past.
On the other side, the Holocaust is one of the most interesting historiographical subjects and challenges every historical theory, including the postmodern. The question “if and how” such an incident can be represented in a historical text has not yet found a complete answer. The uniqueness of the Holocaust lies largely with the fact that it issues a moral problem to the historian who tries to write about it: how is it possible to handle this subject without altering its meaning, understating or even denying it? For the postmodern theory the challenge is even greater. Hayden White for example has been criticized because the relativism of the theory he proposes may allow to Holocaust deniers to support their views on the basis of the postmodern theory. Although White has clearly stated that such views about the Holocaust are “morally offensive”, he could not give a persuasive scientific answer to these accusations.
The possible misinterpretations of the Holocaust involve two dangers: Firstly the denial of the event as such and secondly its use for other political expediencies. It can be generally concluded that the way the past is understood and how it is interpretated by a philosophy of history correlates with the needs of the situations that are lived in the present. Using the Holocaust example once more, if we choose to represent it historically as a problem of continuing anti-semitism, where the Jews are always the victims, we should take into account how this conclusion can justify the imperialistic policy of USA and Israel in the Middle East. If it can do it, (and it has in a way succeeded at least since 1967), then we should definitely try to avoid reaching the
opposite end, not mentioning or eliminating the importance of the Nazi genocide and, as a result, atoning a fascist regime.
For these problems to be transcended we can claim that a new philosophy of history is needed, one that has two basic keystones: firstly, the acceptance that the remnants of the past can be used for various and equal interpretations (based on the conclusions of the postmodern theory). Secondly, that the limit of these interpretations should be decided according to the political situations of each present and that they should move in an emancipatory direction. History is a political instrument and the philosophy of history needed nowadays should take into account not only scientific and moral issues, but also political ones.

As a so-called "faction," that is, a combination of fact and fiction Just before Dawn engages the issue of protest in a way that is particularly relevant to Nigeria's past. The mere combination of factual and fictional events and characters underlines the notion that history is far more fluid, contextual and negotiable than it ostensibly seems. As a text in which real historical personages and events are re-interpreted, it shows just how tenuous any claim to objectivity can be. Protest is implicated in the text's multilayered approach to history itself: it deals with Nigerian history from the 1914 amalgamation to contemporary times, showing how arbitrary the process of "making history" is, and how those who purported to make history actually distort it. This paper examines the way history can be manipulated to shape the national narratives to suit those in power to the detriment of the ordinary Nigerian citizen. In the novel, Omotoso strives to chart a course of communal awareness and social reconstruction as he shows concern for the socio-political issues prevalent in Nigeria.

This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary imagination, used protest as a mode of expression necessary for assessing the relationship between art, ideology and social consciousness. This study examines the relationship of these three elements within the context of selected Nigerian novels dealing with a specific society struggling within difficult economic and socio-political circumstances. The analytical focus is on six primary texts, namely Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987); Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (1988); Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra (1982); Festus Iyayi’s Violence (1979); Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000) and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002). The choice of these texts is informed by the fact that their thematic preoccupations and structural concerns are broadly similar. In these texts, the selected writers have attempted to chart a course of communal awareness and social reconstruction as they show concern for the socio-political issues prevalent in Nigeria. In essence, the study takes a close look at the nature of protest, its manifestation in literature and the novel.

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-0668-4, paperback, 276 Pages

This article attempts to describe some characteristics of New Italian Epic (NIE), especially in relation to the epic mode itself. It aims to liberate the term 'epic' from the perception inherited from twentieth-century literary theory, and to reassess it as a component of NIE. The article shows how NIE interprets 'epic' as a way of rereading history critically by engendering new myths (mythopoesis), and how it conveys a desire for stories that encompass a search for historical truth. NIE is described as a corpus of new metahistorical romances for the contemporary moment, a tool that enables readers to take an active part in the construction of meaning within a society that seems to have progressively forgotten how to interpret data, to the detriment of historical truth. This is achieved through the recalling of events in the form of allegorical narratives, which, while they do not recount Italian historical facts as such, evoke real events by referring to what has been left unsaid in Italian history. This perspective involves the problematic question of realism, which leads, in this frame, to a search for truth and knowledge. Realism emerges as a pure textual fact, and thus parataxis no longer represents a rhetorical strategy to obtain mimesis. In NIE parataxis works as a basic element of epic narration, whose aim is to evoke. A number of examples from NIE novels are discussed in illustrating how this narrative strategy is created.

Organizational evolution is presented in lieu of the concept of change, revolution, revitalization, etc. in that one can assert that organizations can only evolve, they cannot develop a new structure and paradigm from nonexistent precursors, elements, structures, etc. One year is action science based with the executives diving off of logs into the arms of their vice presidents, the next is playing games and doing puzzles to determine the company's cognitive centre, more recently its not been about expressing feelings and defenses, or understanding perception, but about being appreciated. In short, all of these evangelically based approaches which view an organization through a single lens fail