ABSTRACT
Historical fi ction poses a somewhat ambiguous reality. Its fi ctive element cannot be denied, and yet it is something other than purely creative writing. The often antagonistic relationship between literature and its epithet ‘historical’ has created a long tradition of debate focused on the key issue of legitimacy. Most recently, in 2005, the academic journal Rethinking History devoted an entire issue to ‘the multiple and mutating relations between history and fi ction, particularly on the nature and status of historical fi ction’ (Harlan 141). In this edition Richard Slotkin argued that ‘the fi ction writer must treat a theory which may be true as if it was certainly true, without quibble or qualifi cation; and credibly re-present a material world in which that theory appears to work’ (221). Given this premise, it is not surprising that professional historians are skeptical of the validity of the literary genre. Although historical novelists often strenuously assert that their work is a creation of the imagination, they will, in the same context, argue that their work is a representation of the past by offering numerous examples of their adherence to an offi cial historical record.
