ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how radical literary and historiographical theory of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the writing of historical fiction, and the ways in which this was both resisted by, and already innate within, the form. We address some key questions. How did experimental writing of the latter part of the twentieth century adapt the historical form to its own ends? How do the set of aesthetic strategies associated with postmodernism intersect with history, and what does this mean for the writer? How might formal experimentation be used in order to undermine the organisation of history?
