Publication details
V zemi příběhů Grahama Swifta
| Title in English | In Graham Swift’s storyland |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The text examines the way in which Waterland by Graham Swift works with the question of the significance of history, its relation to fiction and to oral stories. The novel challenges the traditional view of history as an objective representation of what happened by blurring the boundary between history and story, fact and fiction. It views history as a narrative construct, which means that like any other narrative, it is influenced by its author and his/her intentions, and by the properties of narrative, its possibilities and restrictions. The novel also links this topic to the role stories play in people's endeavour to grasp the world around them, other people, and themselves. The chapter demonstrates that the novel deals with these issues both explicitly on the level of content and implicitly on the level of form, in particular in its narrative strategy. The narrator strives to understand his present circumstances by telling the story of his past but he is not able to arrive at an objective reconstruction of events. Still, he acknowledges the crucial role of stories in people's coping with reality and making sense of the world. |