HISTORY AND HISTORIES IN PENELOPE LIVELY’S MOON TIGER AND CLEOPATRA’S SISTER
HISTORY AND HISTORIES IN PENELOPE LIVELY’S MOON TIGER AND CLEOPATRA’S SISTER

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the way in which the typically postmodern critical concept of “historical metafiction” (Linda Hutcheon) can be applied to the two books of the British novelist Penelope Lively’s, Moon Tiger and Cleopatra’s Sister. It discusses the manner in which both books put forth and question issues such as historical Truth, collective versus private history, official records of history, and the nature of the traces of the past. Although Moon Tiger seems to enact synchrony in the way it is written, while the story in Cleopatra’s Sister is presented in a diachronic line, both novels share the same interest in the revision of the idea of History which comes to be replaced by small, multiple, alternative histories.

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