Fictionalizing History: Narrative Strategy in Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence

Abstract

Postmodernist treatments of the past and history are typically criticized by historians. For the postmodernists, history is nothing but a text: the principal problem of historical representation is that of narrativization. When it comes to representing the past, there is no important distinction between fact and fiction. Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Enchantress of Florence, offers interesting versions of different historical events, individuals and societies. In The Enchantress of Florence, the narrative functions in such a way as to expose the implicit claims of narrative to the “truth of history.”  Here the story-telling aspect of narrative is used to highlight the idea of history as a text among other texts. The novel shows the process of textualisation of history through the narrator, who usually reminds the reader of the importance of narrativization.