Table Of ContentThe Nineteenth Century
Revis(it)ed
The New Historical Fiction
The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction
explores the renaissance of the American historical novel at the turn of
the twenty-first century. The study examines the revision of nineteenth-
century historical events in cultural products against the background
of recent theoretical trends in American studies. It combines insights
of literary studies with scholarship on popular culture. The focus of
representation is the long nineteenth century – a period from the early
republic to World War I – as a key epoch of the nation-building project
of the United States. The study explores the constructedness of historical
tradition and the cultural resonance of historical events within the
discourse on the contemporary novel and the theory formation
surrounding it. At the center of the discussion are the unprecedented
literary output and critical as well as popular success of historical fiction
in the USA since 1995. An additional postcolonial and transatlantic
perspective is provided by the incorporation of texts by British and
Australian authors and especially by the inclusion of insights from neo-
Victorian studies. The book provides a critical comment on current and
topical developments in American literature, culture, and historiography.
Ina Bergmann is associate professor of American studies at the University
of Würzburg, Germany. She is the author of one monograph, And Then
the Child Becomes a Woman: Weibliche Initiation in der amerikanischen
Kurzgeschichte 1865–1970 (2003); the (co)editor of nine volumes of es-
says and special sections of journals, among them Liminality and the Short
Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing
(2015), Cultures of Solitude: Loneliness – Limitation – Liberation (2017),
and Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (2018); and a frequent contributor to peer-reviewed journals
and international book projects. She has held fellowships with the
Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, the Trinity
Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute at Trinity College
Dublin, and the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
in San Marino, California, USA.
Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
Victorian Contagion
Risk and Social Control in the Victorian Literary Imagination
Chung-jen Chen
Genres and Provenance in the Comedy of W.S. Gilbert
Pipes and Tabors
Richard Moore
Dickensian Affects
Charles Dickens and Feelings of Precarity
Joshua Gooch
Geography and the Literary Imagination in Victorian Fictions of Empire
The Poetics of Imperial Space
Jean Fernandez
Jane Austen and Altruism
Magdalen Ki
“Music Makers” and World Creators
The Forms and Functions of Embedded Poems in British Fantasy Narratives
Michaela Hausmann
The Bohemian Republic
Transnational Literary Networks in the Nineteenth-Century
James Gatheral
The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed
The New Historical Fiction
Ina Bergmann
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Nineteenth-Century-Literature/book-series/
RSNCL
The Nineteenth Century
Revis(it)ed
The New Historical Fiction
Ina Bergmann
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Ina Bergmann to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-63466-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12807-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 History, Fiction, and the USA 1
1.1 The New American Historical Fiction 1
1.2 A Brief History of the Historical Novel 6
1.3 Nineteenth-Century Historical Romance as National
Literature 10
1.4 The Fact/Fiction Dichotomy 15
1.5 Master Narrative vs. Micro Narrative 18
1.6 Academic History vs. Pop History 20
1.7 The Illusion of Veracity 23
1.8 Nostalgia, Escapism, or Historical Lesson? 29
1.9 The Appeal of the Nineteenth Century 32
1.10 Historical Fiction, Memory, and Genre 37
1.11 The Neoconservative, the Liberal, the Identitarian,
and the Postmodern 46
1.12 Is All New Historical Fiction Historiographic Metafiction? 49
1.13 How Neo-Victorian Is It? 59
1.14 Revis(it)ing the Past 68
2 Historical Crime Fiction 77
2.1 Theoretical Conceptions 77
2.2 Caleb Carr’s The Alienist (1994) 82
2.3 Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club (2003) 87
2.4 Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (2003) 98
vi Contents
3 Multi-Time-Level Historical Fiction 103
3.1 Theoretical Groundwork 103
3.2 Valerie Martin’s The Great Divorce (1994) 107
3.3 Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days (2005) 114
3.4 David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife (2008) 119
4 Historical Biofiction 131
4.1 Theoretical Foundations 131
4.2 Lauren Belfer’s City of Light (1999) 139
4.3 Diane Glancy’s Stone Heart (2003) 146
4.4 John May’s Poe & Fanny (2004) 154
5 Reanimated Classics 160
5.1 Theoretical Framework 160
5.2 Christopher Bigsby’s Hester (1994) 170
5.3 Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone (2001) 178
5.4 Geraldine Brooks’s March (2005) 185
6 Revis(it)ing History and Fiction 193
7 W orks Cited 199
Index 233
Acknowledgments
This monograph is an abridged and updated version of my
Habilitationsschrift, the German equivalent of a second book, which
was accepted by the Faculty of Arts & Humanities of the University of
Würzburg, Germany, in 2010. I am grateful for the professional
guidance Jochen Achilles provided during the creation of the original
version of the manuscript. I acknowledge the constructive criticism the
two anonymous reviewers offered during the publisher’s review process.
I thank Michelle Salyga, senior editor at Routledge, for her ongoing
support of this book project, and the whole production team for their
valued service, especially Jeff Anderson for his eagle-eyed copyediting.
Last but not least, I am thankful to Sophie Renninger for her assistance
with proofreading and preparing the index.
1 History, Fiction, and the USA
1.1 The New American Historical Fiction
The turn of the twenty-first century not only marks the beginning of the
new millennium but also signals what some historians mockingly call “a
new golden age of historical popularization” (Wilentz). The “renaissance
of the historical novel” (Byatt, Histories 9) is transnationally docu-
mented (Nünning, Fiktion II; Hutcheon, Canadian; Bölling; Meinig;
Green; Friedrich). It is one segment of “a worldwide florescence of
popular interest in the past” (Harlan 109), which also includes forms
of visual and virtual history (Scheiding, “Introduction”; Groot,
Consuming, Remaking; Hulbert/Inscoe). The comeback of historical
fiction is embedded in the overall return of narration (“Wiederkehr des
Erzählens,” Friedrich 7) and the general “renaissance of the book”
(Ribbat 17). A popular revival of historical fiction (King 2) can be traced
since the 1980s and 1990s (Kunow, “Making” 187). Especially the last
twenty-five years have seen an unprecedented height in the genre, even
surpassing its heyday in the nineteenth century (Harlan 109). At the turn
of the twenty-first century, historical fiction “has finally come into its
own” (Johnson, Historical xvii).
This revitalization of historical fiction in the USA is a phenomenon
informed by a number of dichotomies. The most striking of these is
that the contemporary historical novel has managed to please both
readers and critics, a trend that is obvious for twenty-first-century
fiction in general (Ribbat 11). The popular book in the US today – to
borrow the title of James D. Hart’s seminal study The Popular Book:
A History of America’s Literary Taste (1950) – is the historical novel.
The literary market is flooded with historical fiction of all kinds, the
publishing houses readily accommodating the demand. Relevant no-
vels are recommended to a broad public by popular and very influ-
ential book clubs and TV shows. Bookstores increasingly feature
separate sections for historical fiction (Friedrich 12). Historical fiction
has always been a genre favored by the audience (Burt xi), but this level
of success is new.
