The Past in the Present: History, Memory, and Literature

Abstract

Historians are not the only actors in our societies who produce representations of the past. The insurgencies of memory, as well as the allure of fiction, constitute formidable competitors. Today, historians recognize that the knowledge they produce is merely one among several modes through which societies relate to the past. Works of fiction—at least some of them—and memory, whether collective or individual, also confer presence upon the past, sometimes, and often, more powerfully than history books do. It is the multiple relationships among history, memory, and literature that this essay seeks to examine.