The Balance Between History And Fiction

Canada's well-known literary theorist Linda Hutcheon proposes the "Historiographic Metafiction" concept while she studies the trends of the European and American postmodern fictions since the 1960s'. This type of fiction shows the perfect union of historical material and artistic imagination. Historical characters and events are utilized to their fullest in historiographic metafiction, but simultaneously the authenticity of history is problematized, which reflects the basic characteristic of historiographic metafiction—being both self-reflexive and historical. Historiographic metafiction is a perfect combination of historiography and metafiction, which is distinguished from the traditional historical novel, evidently challenges the credibility of historiography, problematizes the historical truth and lays emphasis on various aspects of historical likelihood.Don Delillo's Libra treats America's 35th President John F. Kennedy's assassination as the subject matter, questions the authenticity and authority of the historical narrative by revisiting the history and gives the problematic treatment to the possibility of the historical knowledge. It presents multiple narrative possibilities and a variety of possible"truths", and embodies the characteristics of historiographic metafiction. Don Delillo gives a convincing description of the assassination of Kennedy, but he does not assert that his text about the event is more credible than the official historical text. On the contrary, the author overtly acknowledges that the fictive imagination is blended with the historical material. The purpose of doing so is that the author believes fiction can rescue history from its confusions, which can also make the readers escape from the disarray of history and then have a better understanding of history.Based on the theory of historiographic metafiction, the thesis aims at studying Don Delillo's Libra and coming to the conclusion that Libra possesses the main characteristics of historiographic metafiction and achieves the balance between history and fiction. The thesis is made up of six parts.The first part introduces the trend of employing historical material to revisit the history in postmodern works and clarifies the aim and significance of the thesis. The second part introduces Don Delillo and his novel Libra and summarizes its status in current research.The third part introduces the theory of historiographic metafiction, discusses some specific issues regarding the interaction of historiography and fiction, such as the postmodern relation of history and fiction, the nature of identity and subjectivity, the intertextual nature of the past and the problematic of language, and sums up the major characteristics of historiographic metafiction.The fourth part gives a detailed analysis of the novel Libra and displays its major characteristics of historiographic metafiction, which question the credibility of historiography, display the problematic of subjectivity and challenge the official history.The fifth part testifies that the novel Libra has achieved the balance between history and fiction, and has stressed the historical likelihood properly.The sixth part draws the conclusion that Don Delillo's Libra is a text that bears the major characteristics of historiographic metafiction and combines history and fiction in a balanced way.