The Truth Of Fiction

As a writer with cross-border and cross-cultural background,Michael Ondaatje is one of the most important members in contemporary Canadian literary field and even the world.The blurring of the line between history and fiction is an unchangeable feature in Ondaatje's writings,which combines real historical events or historical figures with fiction.Ondaatje breaks the binary opposition between fact and fiction,life and art,center and edge in his novels,showing us the complex and diverse possibilities of history with the artistic truth of fiction.This thesis aims at a systematic study of Michael Ondaatje's historical writing,attempting to uncover Ondaatje's views of history and literature,explore the post-modern historical consciousness running through the contents and technique in his novels,probe into how literature participates in history by means of a close reading of Ondaatje's four novels,namely,Coming Through Slaughter,In the Skin of a Lion,The English Patient,Anil's ghost,and drawing mainly upon the relevant theories put forward by postmodern theorists(of history).Ondaatje's post-modern view of history can be understood from three aspects of the textuality of history,the fictionality of history and ideology of history.In Ondaatje's view,there is no History,which means the objective and essential history does not exist.He has questioned the way we understand history and the objectivity of historical writing,pointing out how history is intertwined with power.Nevertheless,literature can shape reader's understanding and perception of history and reality,so writers should reclaim untold stories that are excluded from official and mainstream history.Representing the past in the field of literature is a process of preventing the past from becoming a changeless conclusion and opening up to the present.Ondaatje uses narrative strategies such as non-linear narrative,multiple narrative perspectives and intertext to express his post-modern historical consciousness:presenting the fragmentation and discontinuity of history with non-linear narrative,revealing the plurality and complexity of history with multiple narrative perspectives,showing reflections on history and literature by summoning other texts."The Truth of Fiction" can be the best annotation of Ondaatje's literary world.His historical writing breaks the illusion of historical objectivity and truth,exerts the power of literary imagination created by language,and gives respect and care to the unknown people of history by showing historical diversity which is obscured and suppressed.