This study investigates issues of authenticity in historical fiction, focusing on books that were shortlisted for or won the Booker Prize for Fiction between 1982 and 2016, using the books themselves as well as the Booker Prize Papers at Oxford Brookes University. Historical fiction has been prevalent on Booker Prize shortlists and has frequently attracted critical attention regarding similarity to real events, author research, or ability to reflect contemporary events. In this dissertation, it was sought to identify how authors and the material book contribute to these debates and what they might tell us about the nature of historical fiction as a prize-winning genre. Rather than a literature focus, this study takes a book and publishing theory approach; it also combines ideas about prize culture, paratext and the role of authors instead of considering such concepts separately. The dissertation has three main sections. The first investigates the nature of genre categorisation, with a case study of Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark as a largely factually accurate historical novel. The second explores the concept of disclaimers and transparency, investigating different ways authors demonstrate their knowledge of a historical period through paratextual features of the novel. The final section focuses on historical fiction’s relationship with contemporary events, a traditional criticism being that the genre cannot reflect modern concerns. The findings point to the importance of authors for communicating the meaning of their historical fiction through disclaiming levels of research and connecting their topics to contemporary events. This frequently relates to the weightiness of subjects because responsibility appears to be felt by authors to adhere to realities of past world-shaping events, within the creative novelistic framework. By combining theories of paratext from Genette with the publicity garnered by the Booker Prize, an intensified situation of authorial input on the aforementioned facets of authenticity has been identified for historical fiction.
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Jones, Catherine
Rights Holders: Jones, Catherine Supervisors: Potter, Jane
Oxford International Centre for Publishing
MA Publishing Media
2019
© Jones, Catherine Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved