The embedded historian: an exploratory comparative reading of historiographic metafiction in popular feminist literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51247/pdlc.v7iEspecial1.921Keywords:
historiographic metafiction, popular feminist literature, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, intersectionality, subaltern voiceAbstract
Objective: To examine how popular feminist narratives recover historical memory from a narrative perspective through a comparative analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story "The Headstrong Historian" and the epilogue "Historical Notes" from Margaret Atwood's *The Handmaid's Tale*. Methodology: This exploratory study employed a qualitative approach based on a comparative reading of both texts. The analysis was grounded in Hutcheon's (1988) concept of historiographic metafiction, supplemented by secondary evidence from contemporary fiction written by women in Scotland and from widely circulated romance novels. It also distinguished between popular literature, defined by its genre and circulation, and popular feminism, understood, according to Banet-Weiser (2018), as a political identity shaped by market dynamics. Results: The findings showed that historiographic metafiction adopts opposing narrative configurations in the works analyzed. In Adichie's text, the figure of the historian integrated into the narrative restored and vindicated the historical record, while in Atwood's work, it questioned the possibility of trusting any historian incorporated into the narrative. Conclusions: The main contribution of the study was to demonstrate that the narrative recovery of historical memory does not respond to a single mechanism, but rather can develop through divergent strategies. The exploratory limitations of the analysis were acknowledged, and a specific and falsifiable line of inquiry was proposed for future comparative research on historical memory, metafiction, and popular feminist identities.
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