Abstract
In 2031, a woman inherits a box full of books and notes for a thesis on postmodernism, history and post-1980 British fiction, but the thesis itself is missing. Thus begins an exploration of how postmodern concepts of historical knowledge, marginalization, time and metafiction influence five literary works: Flaubert's Parrot, by Julian Barnes; Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively; Chatterton, by Peter Ackroyd; The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson; and Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard. The literary analyses of Brian McHale, Patricia Waugh, Linda Hutcheon, and Amy Elias are covered, in addition to the critical discussion affecting the History profession as espoused by Hayden White, Keith Jenkins, Perez Zagorin and Arthur Marwick. In the late twentieth century, postmodern thought complicated, and in many ways constrained, the ways we view history. Yet, as these five works show, postmodernism has also expanded those vistas. The little we do know about the past, despite its tentative claim to truth -- and, perhaps most importantly, the limitless possibilities afforded by those discrepancies -- is more than enough to keep writers like Barnes, Lively, Ackroyd, Winterson and Stoppard writing -- and their readers reading.