ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on regulative metaphors that describe history in order to gain a sense of what sorts of issues have arisen with regard to history and historiography during the postmodern era. It examines a fairly traditional historical novel series by Per Anders Fogelstrom. The book describes the strategies that women writers employ when they come to grips with history. These include: Male ventriloquism, Counter-History, Tales of Suffering, Exceptionalism, Female Utopia and Gender as a Construction. The book also focuses on Ola Larsmo's attempt to debunk the Swedish national myth of homogeneity and provides a case study of how different eras reinterpret certain political figures according to their own needs and interests. It explains the transnationalism and how histories can communicate across national borders, often by invoking or deconstructing the very notion of nationhood.
