REVISITING THE GAPS: ELEMENTS OF HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION IN BARBARA KINGSOLVER’S THE LACUNA

With the rise of postmodern literature like historiographic metafiction, novelists have challenged traditional historicism while problematising historical justification for past injustice. Kingsolver uses postmodern literary devices in The Lacuna presenting her novel as a work of historiographic metafiction. The political and historical context in which Kingsolver uses such literary devices reveals the novel's historiographic metafictional qualities. It self reflexively evokes a reconsideration of the historical accounts. The aim of this paper is to analyze the way Kingsolver uses history in the novel. In order to make use of such analysis, this paper will make use of the critical lens of Linda Hutcheon's Historiographic Metafiction. In line with Hutcheon's argumentations, this study claims that through metafictional qualities The Lacuna deconstructs all the techniques and the methods on which traditional historiography builds itself.