Can a literary reality be considered as a historical truth? A New Historical Approach

Many times we come across the terms such as history novel, history poem, and history drama and so on. But the question is how we should interpret the historical events, happenings, characters and settings in a work of art? Should we consider represented events and characters as real which are based on factual events and figures or as imaginary entities or as something between these two, that is a combination of both filtered through the author’s mind? How much those characters seem authentic? How much is the author reliable? Which ideology does the author support? It is obvious that each historical era has its own ideology and ideological institutions and their discourses established and supported by the ruling class. Poststructuralists would agree that narrative can never escape the discursive level. For Foucault discourse is always inseparable from power, because discourse is the governing and ordering medium of every institution. Louis Althusser, the French Marxist philosopher, argues that we are all 'subjects' of ideology which operates by summoning us to take our places in the social structure. This summoning works through the discursive formations or practices materially linked with 'state apparatuses'(religious, legal, educational, and so on). This is enough to find traces of prejudices and priorities even in the most liberal writer. It is better to have a look at the poststructuralist ideas on history in0691s-01s: First, there are two meanings of the word 'history': (a) the events of the past and (b) telling a story about the events of the past. Poststructuralist thought makes it clear that history is always 'narrated'. The past is available only in the form of 'representations'. Second, historical periods are not unified, state, harmonious, homogeneous entities, there is no single history, only discontinuous and contradictory, heterogeneous histories. Third, historians can no longer claim that their study of the past in detached and objective. Fourth, the relations between literature and history must be rethought. Literary works should not be regarded as sublime and transcendent expressions of the 'human spirit', but as texts among other texts. As a result, if literature is one of the ideological products, so what is the historical value of a literary text? Should we consider literary works such as history plays of Shakespeare, history novels or works of any author as the truthful treatment of facts and history or as a kind of literary and artistic if not 'false and deviated' manipulation of facts and history? We should juxtapose different non-literary facts produced by lawyers, theologians, scientist and historians along with literary facts and read the latter in the light of the former. Therefore after reading some poems such as an ode and a sonnet and even an epic we should not jump to the conclusion and write history books based on poetry or a piece of a literary work .

کلیدواژه ها:

discourses ، discursive formations ، historicity ، ideology ، ideological institutions ، new historicism ، poststructuralist ، power ، representations ، state apparatuses ، subjects