The history writer’s tale : historical fiction and the depiction of identity in Michiel Heyns’s ‘the typewriter’s tale’ and ‘bodies politic’

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between historical fiction, history, and the portrayal of the identity of historical figures with specific reference to two novels by Michiel Heyns, namely: The Typewriter’s Tale (2005) and Bodies Politic (2008). Throughout the study the relationship between history as a discipline and historical fiction is investigated. The distinctions and boundaries between the above-mentioned genres are explored using, in part, Paul Ricoeur’s ideas about narrative - as set out in Time and Narrative (1983) and Memory, History and Forgetting (2000) - and what those ideas imply about what we choose to remember (and how we choose to remember it), what we choose to forget and why, and the role of silences in both history and narrative. In addition, Hayden White’s theories regarding the inseparability of history writing from literary tropes and characteristics such as plot, imagination and narrative voice, as expounded in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), and the implications of this for historical fiction, are analysed and evaluated. Furthermore, Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas on the “Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” [1874] serve as a framework to explore the unique contribution that historical fiction can make to the popular understanding of the past. The nature of historical representation and representation of historical personae and identities in historical fiction are also investigated as well as the differing ways in which history and historical fiction deal with the question of the identity of historical figures. In the chapter on Bodies Politic Heyns’s contribution to our historic understanding of the Pankhursts, through his portrayal of their private identities, is analysed and how this portrayal takes us beyond the historical public personae, providing a more balanced picture of who they were. Thus, the accuracy and authenticity of Heyns’s portraits are explored. The chapter on The Typewriter’s Tale investigates how Heyns proceeds to strike an historically responsible balance in his portrayal of the identities of Henry James, Morton Fullerton and Edith Wharton as characters in the novel and the identities of these personae as historical figures. In addition, it explores how Heyns imaginatively bridges the gaps in the historical record or relies on creative licence to reinterpret events and characters. This study is connected to the mini-series that I scripted, Root and Bone, through a shared emphasis on historical fiction, and specifically the complexity facing the creator of historical fiction when re-creating the identities and characters of historical personae. The story is partly set in South Africa in 1914 and encompasses a wide range of historical characters, for instance: Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and General Koos de la Rey.