Book reviews
Andria M. Scanlan, Susan A. Weston
1994
Leisure Sciences
What do the Irish Rebellion, Kim Philby's defection, and the end of the world all have in common? According to Margaret Scanlan, each of these events has engaged the new historical consciousness that is currendy impelling British novelists far beyond the romantic nationalism and progressive optimism that characterized such nineteenth-century predecessors as Sir Walter Scott, Rudyard Kipling, and even Leo Tolstoy. Like spy novels or horror stories, historical fiction has always evoked
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... e connotations of self-indulgent escape. Associated with whispered intrigues, carefully costumed dalliances, and "great events" backdrops, these are the books that the "politically correct" reader guiltily and greedily devours in private. It is just this "bad press" that Scanlan sets out to correct in Traces of Another Time. Her study, however, is more than a revisionist's (or enthusiast's) attempt to ease readers' consciences by legitimizing the genre with such serious, "mainstream" authors as Iris Murdoch, Anthony Burgess, and Doris Lessing. Scanlan also explores the literary and political paradoxes facing all historical narratives in an age that repeatedly confronts the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of knowing anything about the past, whether that past be one's own memories glimpsed in the depths of Proustian teacups or the distorted, rewritten texts of a colonial culture. Finally, like her chosen authors, she also exposes the dangers inherent in victor-centred/ centric histories that glamorize violence, glorify the oppressor, and mythologize brutality, ignorance, and arrogance as honour and patriotic fervor. In response to these postmodern concerns, Scanlan analyzes her texts from the same "skeptical, ironic, and discontinuous" (3) perspective that informs her otherwise disparate examples. As her section headings indicate, her examination ranges from the 'Troubles in Ireland," to "Spies and Other Aliens," to conclude forbiddingly and forebodingly with three apocalyptic variations. In fact, the range of Scanlan's critical concern is both her study's greatest strength and its
doi:10.1080/01490409409513237
fatcat:oqgyzn7uxfev5kve2vykjxl36y