"Beneath Every History, Another History":Counterhistory In Bring Up The Bodies

Hilary Mantel is one of the most accomplished female writers in Britain. Bring Up the Bodies is the second book of her Tudor trilogy, and brought her the second Man Booker Prize in 2012. Hilary Mantel thus becomes the first British writer who won the award twice. Continuing the story of the first book. Thomas Cromwell is managing his political career with great care; he witnessed old queen Katherine’s pitiful death, watched Anne Boleyn’s losing favor, and figured out that the king fell in love with Lady Jane Seymour, then he started to pave way for himself; so when the king decided to get rid of Anne Boleyn, Cromwell effectively collected evidence of her crime and successfully sent her to guillotine for her adultery and treason, and at last he helped Jane Seymour to become the new Queen of England.The paper tries to analyze the counterhistory features of Bring Up the Bodies from the narrative perspective, and reveals the author’s writing purpose as to supplement historical explanation. During her history fiction writing, Hilary Mantel always paid attention to marginal history, and her historical narrative often focus on petty figures in history. According to George Elton, who specialized in Tudor dynasty history, the rise of Tudor dynasty largely attributed to the government mechanism reformation in the reign of Henry Ⅷ in which Thomas Cromwell played a vital role, this research greatly influenced Mantel’s historical ideology. According to new historicist Stephen Greenblatt’s historical viewpoints, history that people want to pursue through anecdotes and other marginal information can be called counterhistory, different from mainstream grand narrative, counterhistory can reveal the reality that beneath history. Through her representation of long-ignored petty history, Mantel showed her novel’s counterhistory features. Firstly, Mantel reconstructed three historical figures:the unscrupulous Cromwell was depicted as an intellectual renaissance man, the capricious Henry VIII was an admirable king, while the sophisticated Anne Boleyn was a pitiful victim of politics. Next, she reinterpreted three influential historical events:the death of Thomas More was no longer regarded as the sacrifice of a faithful minister, but the inevitable consequence of one’s unwillingness to follow the trend of history; the downfall of Anne Boleyn is not just for political divergence with Thomas Cromwell, or losing favor from the king, but the king’s will and the minister’s conduction; as for the uprising of Jane Seymour, is not only the consequence of political conflicts between new aristocrats and old aristocrats, but also for the king’s favor, and Cromwell’s plan to develop his political career. Compared with grand narrative, the author’s choice of Cromwell as the narrator can get into to his heart, and arouse readers’sympathy; the voice of the implied author is like to communicate with readers and invite multiple interpretation of history. By the application of disorder of time and displacement of places, Mantel formed her non-linear narrative; readers follow the stream of consciousness of the narrator to look forward or trace back history, follow his moving physical places and mental places to get an experimental experience of history, in this way "touch the real" of history. By reconstructing the traditional historical stereotypes, reconstructing major historical events, and constructing petty narrative of historical fiction, Mantel wants to reveal authentic history that is hidden beneath grand narrative.