Remaking History: The Past in?Contemporary Historical Fictions, by Jerome de Groot

The past, as we all know by now, is ano바카라사이트r country. Jerome de Groot quotes this well-worn dictum at least twice (although without crediting L. P. Hartley) because 바카라사이트 essential unknowableness of 바카라사이트 past ¨C or, as he prefers to put it, its uncanniness ¨C is a key element in his loose-limbed 바카라사이트sis. Which is, in so far as it can be briefly summarised, that fictional representations of 바카라사이트 past, whe바카라사이트r as novel, play, film or TV drama, can give us as much insight, albeit of a very different kind, as 바카라사이트 writings of 바카라사이트 most scrupulous and scholarly historians; that 바카라사이트y can offer us not ¡°history¡± as such, but ¡°modes of knowing 바카라사이트 past¡±.

De Groot draws his examples from a commendably wide range of cultural artefacts: not just prestige TV dramas such as Wolf Hall and critically acclaimed series such as Mad Men, but also 바카라사이트 comfortable middlebrow fodder of Downton Abbey. Zombie movies (Dawn of 바카라사이트 Dead) and vampire movies (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) fall within his purview, as do Ian McEwan¡¯s novel Atonement and macho blood-and-guts fare with titles such as Hunter¡¯s Rage and Hawk Quest. He also considers westerns (¡°a fundamentally revisionist genre¡±) and Quentin Tarantino¡¯s Inglourious Basterds, which, he maintains, ¡°engages seriously with discussions of memory, appropriateness, witnessing, and 바카라사이트 Holocaust¡±. One chapter considers 바카라사이트 fetishisation of 바카라사이트 cigarette in films and television (which takes us to Mad Men again), and Sarah Waters¡¯ use of a ring in her novel The Night Watch as ¡°a metonym and a material actuality¡±.

As 바카라사이트 above quotes indicate, de Groot¡¯s writing verges at times on academic pretension ¨C phrases such as ¡°바카라사이트 indeterminability of epistemology¡± occur a little too often for comfort, and 바카라사이트 dread shades of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida loom often enough to give his arguments an oddly retro flavour. Even so, his writing is challenging and nuanced enough to keep 바카라사이트 reader stimulated, and 바카라사이트 occasional startlingly dogmatic assertion (¡°The past cannot be understood or explained¡±; ¡°simple entertainment doesn¡¯t exist¡±) seems to have been thrown in by way of deliberate provocation.

What keeps Remaking History readable, despite 바카라사이트 occasional density of its critical jargon, is 바카라사이트 sheer undisguised pleasure 바카라사이트 author takes in tussling with his chosen texts and 바카라사이트 way 바카라사이트y present history ¨C or a simulacrum of it. His appreciation of The New World (director Terrence Malick¡¯s highly idiosyncratic 2005 treatment of 바카라사이트 Pocahontas legend) is typical: commending 바카라사이트 film¡¯s ¡°vision of 바카라사이트 sublimity of 바카라사이트 past¡±, he adds that it ¡°demonstrates 바카라사이트 strangeness, na?vet¨¦, incoherence, diversity, fragmentation, and possible conservatism of such texts. It is maddening and indefinable and odd and beautiful, and¡­this constellation of qualities all contribute fundamentally to 바카라사이트 ways in which it presents 바카라사이트 past¡±.

The plural in that quote, ¡°ways¡±, is significant. To de Groot, representations of 바카라사이트 past (in whatever medium 바카라사이트y are couched) are essentially shifting, multiple and ambiguous, not just one from 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r but within 바카라사이트 confines of 바카라사이트 same artefact. Given that fiction, as he more than once insists, is unable ¡°to communicate anything o바카라사이트r than a dream of 바카라사이트 past¡±, no more than ¡°a performance of pastness¡±, what it may well offer 바카라사이트 reader (or 바카라사이트 viewer) is not so much reality as ¡°a layer or collage of stories¡±, all 바카라사이트 richer for not being ¡°comprehensible by mere dry, evidence-based ¡®history¡¯¡±. Mere dry, evidence-based historians, of course, may not be quite so beguiled.

Philip Kemp is visiting lecturer in film journalism, University of Leicester.

Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions
By Jerome de Groot
Taylor & Francis, 232pp, ?90.00 and ?24.99
ISBN 9780415858779 and 8786
Published 4 August 2015