Time and Tide

The work introduces the topic of historical writing in fictional and non-fictional contexts, methodologies and approaches. The author analyses historiography and historical novels and shows how a confabulation is evident in these works, and how these are transacting modes in a single paradigm.

The book uses the theoretical construct of the “Aesthetics Ethic.” It looks at varied aesthetic contours in lived experience, a given “social ethic,” histories of sensibilities, and what is termed a “narrative ethic”, and goes on to look at “Narrative consciousness and historical experience: Living links,” with analysis comprising narrative consciousness, psychological concepts including subjectivity and objectivity, and “the importance of thought.” The book also introduces a new theoretical model of historical truth apprehension.

The examination of fictionalized history and historicized fiction examines aesthetic contours including point of view and the concept of “becoming” in fiction and history; heteroglossia and intertextuality; the conceptions of contingency, metaphor, modality, and chaos; and temporality and rhetoric. It conclude with thoughts and summaries to bring the whole work into focus.