ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how literary scholars have historicized their examination of the novel in ways that blur the boundaries between historical and fictional narrative, and provide both challenges and opportunities for the historian and also discusses New Historicism. It focuses on the graphic novel and how it too can hold up a mirror to both individuals and society, and as such may be worthy of examination, telling about the contemporary preoccupations with the past. The chapter examines the literary and historical writing of the metropolis in order to illustrate how literature and history can enjoy a fruitful and productive relationship. Hayden White has importantly argued that in communicating a realistic representation of the past, history and literature employ the same archetypal narrative forms that operate at a deep structural level. In ancient Greece and Rome, both history and literature were recognized to be exercises in rhetoric, while literature dealt overwhelmingly with imaginary happenings.
