(University of Oregon, 2009-06) Bronte, Patricia Kathleen, 1984-
The revisionist narrative is a sub-genre of postmodernist literature, in which
established narratives are re-written from a perspective for which they did not account.
This term goes beyond "historiographic metafiction" to include fictional narratives,
because both historical and fictional narratives can illustrate many possible
representations for the event in question. The treatment of space and place are central
points at which revisionist narratives expose dominant power systems during the author's
own era and offer new possibilities of reality to the readers. Georg Johannesen's play
Kassandra and Christa Wolf's novel Kassandra change the perspective of landscape in
Homer's The Iliad to reveal underlying power structures and to emphasize the rejection
of absolute truths; these power structures in ancient Troy then point to parallel power
structures in the contemporary societies of the authors. In this manner, landscape within revisionist narratives is essential for exposing the malleability of perspective in history
and fiction.
