Las ruinas del pasado: aproximaciones a la novela histórica posmoderna (review)

History has long served writers as a storage bin of raw materials: it has offered poignant realities often buttressed by documents and testimonial evidence, and has also provided a jumping off point for soaring fantasies extending far beyond the known reality of previous times. The historical novel, one of many manifestations of narrative curiosity about the past and subject of Mercedes Juliá’s Ruinas del pasado, has created a complex history in relation to the past in its own right. In her book, Juliá sets out to examine one part of this history: the postmodern novel, with a focus primarily on Spanish fiction over the past few decades and the various strategies pursued within fiction to represent and construct history.

Juliá’s definition of the historical novel is sweeping in its reach: “las novelas que de alguna manera intentan acercarse a los sucesos pasados o constituyen una reflexión sobre la historia” (15). This allows her to include in her study a range of novels that are narrowly or broadly historical, as well as snippets of literary and historiographic theory that help her scrutinize the novels and draw out the nature of their various historical representations. In chapter one, she offers an overview of the historical novel from Homer to the present, thus providing a brief glimpse of the uses of the past in fiction over a period of nearly three thousand years. Such a far-reaching exercise can only view the skin of historical writing, of course, acknowledging innovation and intense historical curiosity at various points along the way. This overview then leads to the critical heart of Juliá’s study, individual chapters devoted to specific works of the Argentine writer Enrique Molina (Una sombra donde sueña Camila O’Gorman, 1973); Spanish authors Francisco Ayala (Los usurpadores, 1948), Lourdes Ortiz (Urraca, 1982), Fernando Quiñones (El coro a dos voces, 1997), Raúl Ruiz (El tirano de Taormina, 1980; La peregrina y prestigiosa historia de Arnaldo de Montferrat, 1984; Los papeles de Flavio Alvisi, 1985; Sixto VI, 1986), and Antonio Muñoz Molina (Beatus Ille, 1986; El jinete polaco, 1991; El dueño del secreto, 1994); and a final chapter devoted to the theme of immigration in several works by Spanish writer Roberto Montero Glez and Moroccan novelist Mohamed Chukri.

Juliá distinguishes among different classes of novels to justify their inclusion in her study. Some of the works chosen “permiten observar la relación ficción-historia desde las propuestas más sobresalientes de este período” (16). These include, for example, historical novels written by women, novels that show irreverence toward the past, those that focus on memory, and testimonial fiction. Other novels are selected “por su singular acercamiento al pasado” (16). Although all of the works studied in the individual chapters resonate with historicity and certainly merit critical scrutiny, it is not clear conceptually why one novelist from Argentina and one from Morocco were selected for inclusion in a book that tilts heavily toward Spain.

The richness and diversity of history give strong impetus and justification to Juliá’s exploration of the past, which is most useful when it concentrates on individual novels. The best-wrought chapter is devoted to Raúl Ruiz’s tetralogy, in which Juliá examines the imbrication of fantasy and history to create a hybrid postmodern narrative. As Juliá shows, Ruiz uses intelligent parody in the four novels to ridicule the very notion of historical knowledge. Indeed, his work stands firmly amid postmodern skepticism that questions all history through the subversion of certainty and the narrative paradigms that seek to sustain it.

The author does not set out in her study to theorize the historical novel. She draws upon the work of well-known theorists of postmodernism and historiography and offers in each of the chapters...