Historie, parahistorie, ironie – španělský historický román v dobách postmoderny
History, parahistory, irony – Spanish historical novel in the postmodern time

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the methods and the strategies used by Spanish authors of postmodern historical novels to relativize the historic Truths. Instead of the proved dogmatic categories, serving as supports of the traditional historical novel for many a generation, some authors, as E. Mendoza, J. Eslava Galán or A. Pérez-Reverte use original postmodern approaches, e.g. the generation of a so-called “parahistory”, an ironical point of view, a tension between the “classical” form and the “modern” contents, a demythization etc. This is mainly due to their strong skepticism towards the “great” ideologies presented as recipes for the salvation of the world and mankind. Spanish postmodern authors reject the role of the writer as “the conscience of the nation” and deliberately offer only partial view of subjective validity. Their efforts result in highly original historical novels in which nothing and nobody are taken quite seriously, yet the texts still maintain a relatively high informative value of the complex and ambiguous human history.

• Details
• Contents