engleski

The Public Burning: "Play(ing) games with the evidence, manipulat(ing) language itself, mak(ing) History a partisan ally?

What is the relationship of testimonial and artistic frameworks and representations? How are they shaping history and our understanding of reality in general? This paper tries to elucidate some of the ways in which Robert Coover underpins the multivalent interactions of the testifiers and the recipients of a specific historical case study, probing the metaphorical significance of historical allusions and narrative patterning. In his novel The Public Burning, Coover balances fact and fancy, experimenting with forms, mixing absurd and grotesque with the real, fabricating evidence, incorporating historical figures, public testimony, newspaper quotes, dates and other real data with falsifications. The timeframe of the novel is the Cold War period, casting a bitter panorama of the U.S.A. during the early 1950s. Coover’s detailing of the Eisenhower years, specifically the two days that preceded the Rosenberg execution, and his mixing of fictionalized material with ‘hard facts ; ’ label this foray into epistemological questions a perfect blend of fact and fiction within a ‘historical novel.’

Coover; history; fact; fancy; Rosenbergs

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