History and Fiction in the Novels of Chinua Achebe

Abstract

The novel of colonial consciousness particularly contests the positionality of history as the “master narrative” to demystify and dismantle it is situate the historical in the political, social, cultural and economic life of community “Both history and literature are interested in power” asserts Laurence Lerner. While the novelist is interested in how power is sought and exercised by individuals, the interest of the historian lies in studying the operation of power by groups. This operation of power is examined by both the historian and the novelist through representative figures, though for different reasons. “the historian because he cannot do much with lifeless allegory and needs real people, the novelist because the unrepresentative figure is more interesting and is even better way to breathe life into what is representative” (Lerner, 94). Besides sharing interest in the positionality of power, the historian and the novelist also share the narrative space of textuality. This happens because “history and story: etymologically the two words are the same, and only in English have they separated in this way” Challenging the notion of the fixity of facts, History no more remains a monolithic collection of facts and their hegemonic interpretations.