Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction

Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society

by Amy J. Elias

Co-winner of the Perkins Prize from the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Has twentieth-century political violence destroyed faith in historical knowledge? What happens to historical fiction when history is seen as either a form of Western imperialism or a form of postmodern simulation? In Sublime Desire , Amy Elias examines our changing relationship to history and how fiction since 1960 reflects that change. She contends that postmodernism is a post-traumatic imagination that is pulled between two the political desire to acknowledge the physical violence of twentieth-century history, and the yearning for an escape from that history into a ravishing realm of historical certainty. Torn between these desires, both historical fiction and historiography after 1960 redefine history as the "sublime," a territory beyond lived experience that is both unknowable and seductive. In the face of a failure of Enlightenment ideals about knowledge and the West's own history of violence, post-World War II history becomes a desire for the "secular sacred" sublime―for awe, certainty, and belief. Sublime Desire is an eloquent melding of theory and practice. Mixing the canonical with the unexpected, Elias analyzes developments in the historical romance genre from Walter Scott's novels to novels written today. She correlates developments in the historical romance to similar changes in historiography and philosophy. Sublime Desire draws engagingly on more than thirty relevant texts, from Tolstoy's War and Peace to Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry , Charles Johnson's Dreamer , and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain . But the book also examines theories of postmodern space and time and defines the difference between postmodern and postcolonial historical perspectives. The final chapter draws from trauma theory in Holocaust studies to define how fiction can pose an ethical alternative to aestheticized history while remaining open to pluralism and democratic values. In its range and sophistication, Sublime Desire is a valuable addition to postmodernist studies as well as to studies of the historical romance novel.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2001

Reviews

[Paul Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a bit of a doozy to read--I spent the better part of two weeks working my way through the first fifty pages or so. Not because it was unreadable (though Elias does require effort because her writing is very compacted and takes time to absorb), but because I was so taken with Elias's argument that I wanted to make certain I felt confident about the foundations before I moved ahead. Overall, I feel like I was rewarded, though I'll be thinking about and integrating this argument for a while.

Elias's task is to examine the ways history is taken as a subject in certain postmodernist texts (specifically what she terms "metafictional romances"). She anchors her argument in a linkage between these postmodern texts and the historical romances of Walter Scott. In both cases, she detects what she terms "the historical sublime," meaning history itself, because it cannot be known, observed, or experienced in any manner by the present, fills us with awe but also a profound fear. From here she contends that metahistorical texts are actually a post-traumatic reaction to the past, including a confrontation with Enlightenment ideals, colonialism, and other of the worst aspects of humanity's past. The end result is a literary mode that "is situated differently as a tropological reversal of the historical romance genre" (49).

As the argument progresses, I do experience increasing difficulty keeping up with the argument, because Elias draws upon such an enormous body of scholarship and academic discourse that it's hard for my neurodivergent brain to juggle that many points. But that's much more about me than Elias, who is lucid, sharp, and engaging.

Overall, this is an excellent book, not only on historical fiction but on postmodernism more broadly. While it takes effort, this is an excellent book for engaging with the broader debates about postmodernism. Frederic Jameson is the most present critic for discussions of postmodernism, and Brian McHale and Linda Hutcheon are the best philosophers about the poetics of postmodernism, but Elias offers a formidable argument within that larger discourse, and can direct the interested reader to a much larger conversation within the community.

[curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite work of theory of all time. An amazing introduction into how conceptualizations of history and historiography inform historical fiction before and after the postmodern turn. A delightful, fascinating read.