Historical Facts and Historical Fictions

Abstract

This article discusses the similarities and differences between what might be called two »crises of historical consciousness« in the late 17th and the late 20th, the first engendered by a combination of philosophical scepticism with new techniques for questioning the credibility of historical sources and detecting forgeries, the second in our crisis. The result is a widespread cultural relativism to which the debates on colonialism and feminism as well as the practice of anthropology and literary theory have contributed. In both periods, the debate about epistemology is linked to the opening of the frontier between history and fiction and the rise of a hybrid genre of historical novel/novelistic exemplified by St. Real and Defoe in the first crisis, and by Eco, Keneally and many others today.