A Bridge over the Waterland: Linking the Past with the Present in Graham Swift‘s Ever After
Keywords:
historiographic novel, history, stories, memory, the past, the fictional, the factual, Graham Swift, Waterland, Ever AfterAbstract
The British historiographic novel of the last decades of the 20th century challenges the conventional distinction made between the factual and the fictional, showing instead how the two heterogeneous substances – the land of history and the water of stories – merge together. Proceeding from the notion of memory plasticity, i.e. a constantly updated reconstruction of the past, the article discusses the process of readjustment of memories and reshaping of the past in Graham Swift’s novels. It briefly refers to the oxymoronic world of Waterland and then examines at length the way how the narrator’s personal memories merge into history in Ever After. The article also discusses the specific character of historical representation, the rejection of the notion of history as a sum of purposeful events unfolding around the great personalities, the ambiguous function of Shakespearean and fairy-tale allusions and some metaphorical implications such as bridges linking the past with the present in Ever After. It particularly emphasises the mingling of facts and surmises in the representation of both fictional and real historical events. This article is intended as a case study of the novel in the context of Swift’s general style and the postmodern conceptualization of history and fiction.
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