Metahistorical romance
term describing postmodern historical fiction
Metahistorical romance is a term describing postmodern historical fiction, defined by Amy J. Elias in Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction. Elias defines metahistorical romance as a form of historical fiction continuing the legacy of historical romance inaugurated by Sir Walter Scott but also having ties to contemporary postmodern historiography. A metahistorical romance does not merely use history for the setting and events of the novel, but forces the reader to reexamine history, and their own view of it. It accomplishes this by reinterpreting historical events, writing about ordinary people, crossing between various time periods, or bending history in other ways. In Elias's usage, romance does not signify novels focused on marriage and love, but instead a style in which past events are "romanticized" and reinterpreted.
Theory
Metahistorical romance ties closely to the related philosophies of poststructuralism and postmodernism, which sought to push back against a confidence in human reasoning and knowledge. Instead, postmodernists questioned whether we could trust our own vantage point, and instead sought to use irony, deconstruction, and criticism to dismantle the theoretical frameworks of others. In this way, metahistorical romance does not seek to present a perfect view of the past, but rather augments and alters the past in order to provide a new, unique perspective, one that challenges past historical conventions or conceptions.
In this way, metahistorical romances connect to Hayden White's concept of the "historical sublime," the theoretical past created by our minds and the world around us. These novels show us both how much we desire and reach for the historical sublime and also how far off and impossible it truly is.
“Metahistorical romance” enters the record as term describing postmodern historical fiction. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Metahistorical, romance and term can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6822535. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metahistorical romance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.