The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (2022)

The Postmodern
Representation of Reality
in Peter Ackroyd’s
Chatterton
The Postmodern
Representation of Reality
in Peter Ackroyd’s
Chatterton
By
Arya Aryan
The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton
By Arya Aryan
This book first published 2022
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2022 by Arya Aryan
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-8496-8

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-8496-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ...................................................................................................... vii
Acknowledgements ................................................................................. viii
Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1

Introduction
Historiographic Metafiction .................................................................. 5
Anti-representation/ Anti-referentiality ................................................ 6
Representation/ Referentiality............................................................... 6
Heterocosm ........................................................................................... 7
Mise en abyme ...................................................................................... 7
Emplotment........................................................................................... 8
Paratextuality ........................................................................................ 8
Parody ................................................................................................... 9
Self-reflexivity ...................................................................................... 9
Under Erasure ..................................................................................... 10
Postmodernist Re-presentation ........................................................... 10
Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 12

Posmodernism and the Problematisation of the Representation of Reality
Introduction to Postmodern Theories: Which Postmodernism? .......... 12
The Representation of Reality and its Critique ................................... 16
The Problematisation of the Representation of Reality: Postmodernist
Re-presentation vs. Representation and Anti-representation ......... 18
Historiographic Metafiction: “Re-presenting” or “Representing”
Reality? ......................................................................................... 26
The Problematisation of the Representation of Reality through
Narrative Techniques and Strategies ............................................. 34

vi Table of Contents
Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 42

Heterocosmic World
Introduction ......................................................................................... 43
Chatterton as a Heterocosmic Text The Problematisation of the
Investigation for Historical Truth: Bringing the Past to Life......... 43
History under Erasure ......................................................................... 55
The Problematisation of Representationality in Literary Realism
with Regard to Narrative Conventions .......................................... 65
Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 77

Boundaries Blurred
Introduction ......................................................................................... 77
Boundaries Blurred ............................................................................. 78
Meaning as a Process .......................................................................... 90
Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 97

Conclusion
Bibliography ........................................................................................... 107

PREFACE
In our rapidly digitizing age, we are constantly subjected to multiple

perspectives, mass media, and waves of information (and often
misinformation). The postmodern narrative and its storytelling techniques has
emerged in recent decades as a crucial way of engaging with and navigating
our experiences of representation, meaning, and historical understanding. The
postmodern novel indeed reveals to us that literature as well as history are
socially constructed. Reality as we know it is not a monolith, but the result of
our own individual, subjective experiences with the world around us.
Dr Arya Aryan’s The Postmodern Representation of Reality is a
masterful analysis of Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton and an essential addition to
contemporary postmodern literary scholarship. It is a timely and relevant
exploration of how literature and more broadly art mediate our experiences with
reality. Aryan’s fusion of literature, philosophy, and history successfully reveals
that historiographic metafiction, that is historically rooted postmodern fiction
that draws attention to itself as an art form, problematizes the predominant
distinction between representational and antirepresentational views.
Aryan draws from a wealth of philosophical sources and thinkers,
including Derrida, Althusser, and Barthes, and his analysis is thoughtful,
lucid, and clearly explained, providing fresh and insightful readings on
Ackroyd and other twentieth-century fiction, such as T. S. Eliot. Chatterton
best embodies this newfound approach to postmodern blurring of
representation and anti-representation, and such an approach is a watermark
for further postmodern literary studies on this topic. Most importantly,
Aryan presents his philosophical and literary findings in a clear, economic,
and effective manner. This study is a pioneering intellectual reading of
Ackroyd’s literature, while further cementing Ackroyd’s status as a vital
(and contemporary) postmodern writer. Aryan’s The Postmodern
Representation of Reality is a triumph for the ages.
Dr Curtis Runstedler
The University of Stuttgart

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Sarah Catherine-Ilkhani for her

kind support and views during the completion of the manuscript. I would
also like to thank my dear friend and colleague Dr Curtis Runstedler for
editing and proofreading the manuscript and writing a preface for this book.
I am also grateful to Dr Sophie Franklin, another dear friend and colleague
of mine. Our discussions during our walks in Tübingen kept me motivated.
I would like to thank Professor Patricia Waugh for encouraging me to get
this project out as a book.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Recent postmodern literary critics, such as Patricia Waugh and Linda

Hutcheon, connect postmodern literature with the paradox of self-
referentiality, that a text is only capable of referring to itself. However, I
argue that Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton, as a key example of historiographic
metafiction, offers a new perspective into our understanding of postmodern
literature. This text reveals that historiographic metafiction not only
problematises the representational and anti-representational views of
literature, but also offers the text as heterocosmic and hetero-referential, that
is, it represents an external reality by referring to real historical events and
historical figures while simultaneously challenges its representationality
and indicates self-referentiality–that a text is only capable of referring to
itself or to another text. I contend that Ackroyd’s Chatterton at once contests
both its self-referentiality and representational claims towards reality
through certain narrative techniques such as parody, mise en abyme and
emplotment. Therefore, the novel subverts a generally accepted
understanding of postmodern texts as only self-referential.
In the last few decades, poststructuralism has offered a new
strategy of reading. Its impact can be seen upon what is generally called
postmodernist fiction. Poststructuralists and deconstructists demonstrate
contradictions lying at the heart of texts which highly question and overturn
binary oppositions. However, they regard language as responsible for self-
contradictions and hybridity in a text. They consider language as inherently
unreliable. As Jacques Derrida puts it, “language bears within itself the
necessity of its own critique” (2000, 92). However, artistic techniques and
strategies responsible for self-contradictory statements have been
overlooked. In other words, metafictionists have in a sense revived an
obsession with form and artistry. Accordingly, I aim to demonstrate here
that this self-contradictory status is achieved by the writer’s artistic
2 Chapter One
manipulation of narrative strategies and techniques. That is, I rely upon a

postmodern strategy of reading to show and explain the novel’s problematic
characteristics regarding specific narrative strategies and techniques such as
mise en abyme, parody and emplotment.
Moreover, many poststructuralists and the avant-garde practitioners
argue for the impossibility of representation in fiction and regard it as anti-
representational as opposed to the representational view of art and literature.
These theorists and practitioners call the metaphorical death of fiction as
representational, that is, fiction is no longer able to represent the external
reality. For instance, modernists extol a work of art to the degree it stands
for its own sake and in isolation. Nonetheless, historiographic metafiction
aims at both representationality and anti-representationality. In addition,
although some have applied theories of intertextuality to metafictional texts,
intertextuality has not been regarded as the text’s possibility of
representation. Here, I reveal that Peter Ackroyd’s novel Chatterton’s
references and allusions to other works establish the novel as
representational. However, its references to the process of construction and
its own artificiality undermine the very possibility of the novel as essentially
representational. As Chatterton suggests, historiographic metafiction is both
representational and anti-representational. As a result, it simultaneously
connects to the outside world and marks its own fictionality. Accordingly, I
also examine how narrative strategies and techniques make this hybrid
status of the novel possible.
In addition, meaning and reality, which can be used
interchangeably, have been either traditionally depicted as natural and final
as in realism or totally rejected as in modernism and specifically in the
avant-garde (Selden 1989, 50). Literary realism and historiography regard
meaning and reality as natural products. The two aspects use language as a
medium to depict the outside world. In other words, they postulate the
possibility of immediate and direct access to the outside world–
representationality of art. On the other hand, modernists lament the lack of
meaning and reality. Even Jean Baudrillard, known as a postmodernist,
presumes the existence of reality and mourns for its loss in the present era.
In Simulacra and Simulation, he casts doubt upon the exchangeability of the
sign and the truth and their equivalence. However, his account of how the
real is masked and changed to a “pure simulacrum” (Baudrillard 2020, 6)
Introduction 3
implies the loss of the real as natural. On the contrary, historiographic

metafiction tries to suggest that those phenomena that we may recognise as
natural and real are in fact social, cultural and political structures that we
manufacture, not given to us. Thus, I argue that Chatterton as a work of
metafiction acknowledges the existence of the real and meaning.
Nevertheless, it self-reflexively exposes that they are human constructs
created in the artistic process of construction. It exposes how we give
meaning to historical events through the act of writing and representation.
Consequently, I draw upon a postmodern strategy of reading to textually
analyse the novel as it does not reject reality and meaning. Instead, it
questions and problematises them by offering the possibility of both
representationality and anti-representationality of fiction while challenging
both.
Therefore, the predominant views in treating a work of literature
have been either representational (as in literary realism) or anti-
representational (as in modernism) or attributing the problematisation of
representationality to language itself (as in poststructuralism). By the same
token, I show how the novel parodies historiography and literary realism’s
conventions and how it challenges the representational view of art.
Afterward, I focus upon how these boundaries are blurred in the novel and
how the novel problematises representationality. I examine the novel’s
possibility of representation as opposed to modernism’s anti-representational
view. Finally, I argue that the novel acknowledges the existence of reality
and meaning yet as ideologically constructed in the process of writing as
opposed to the idea that postulates meaning as a final product.
My applied methodology in this book is deconstructive and based
upon close readings as well as textual analysis of the form and content of
the novel. I also engage with the scholarly analysis of postmodern theories
in literature too to help students of literature who struggle with the theories
have a better understanding of them and their application in literature and
provide them with both a detailed and in-depth explanation of the theories
and a textual analysis of Chatterton, a key example of postmodern
historiographic metafiction. I argue that postmodernist texts are hetero-
referential as they create a heterocosm as opposed to other representational
views as well as a practical, deconstructive and textual criticism of a
postmodern text by specifically focusing on the ways the text distorts the
4 Chapter One
representation of reality. As Ackroyd’s Chatterton reveals, postmodernist

historiographic metafiction is not simply self-referential, as many critics
contend, but hetero-referential. It lays bare the paradoxes of self-
referentiality while simultaneously creating a heterocosmic world, hence,
hetero-referential.
In Chapter Two, I begin by elucidating postmodernist theories and
ideas considering historiographic metafiction, with a specific focus upon the
concept of representation in art specifically because the novel is mainly
preoccupied with its depiction of art both at the level of subject matter and
structure. I present detailed theoretical discussions of the narrative
techniques and strategies employed in the novel which critique the novel’s
representation of reality. In this chapter, I present a theoretical framework
of postmodern theories as an introductory section. I also provide the reader
with a brief survey concerning the issue of the problematisation of the
representation of reality. Then, I discuss and demarcate postmodernist
hetero-referentiality or “re-presentation” as opposed to the representational
and anti-representational views of art and literature. I argue that
postmodernist re-presentation holds a paradoxical position as it is both
representational and anti-representational. Next, I elaborate historiographic
metafiction’s standpoint towards historical texts and historiography and
argue that the mode conflates the historical with the fictive to problematise
the representation of reality. I discuss that historiographic metafiction re-
presents, but not represents, reality. In other words, it represents reality
whilst undermining the possibility of the representation of reality through
establishing an ironic distance and detachment to the reader via narratives
techniques. The ironic distance helps subvert the view of art as a truthful,
unmediated representation of reality. I devote the final section of Chapter
One to historiographic metafiction’s drawing upon narrative techniques and
strategies in challenging the representation of reality. Parody emerges as a
prominent form, for it is a dominant narrative strategy in the novel which
best helps the text create a heterocosmic world.
The third chapter then draws upon postmodern theories examined
in Ackroyd’s Chatterton to illustrate how it establishes and simultaneously
contests the representationality of art and literature. In the first section, I
discuss and demonstrate the problematisation of historiography and
referentiality in the novel with a focus upon the form and content of the
Introduction 5
novel. I then elaborate the narrative strategies and techniques in the text,
especially parody, which make the problematisation of representation of
reality possible. In the next section, I explore the novel’s use and abuse of
some conventions of literary realism. I also argue and reveal that the
problematisation of the representation of reality in the novel is aimed at the
level of both structure and subject matter.
In Chapter Four, I focus upon the novel’s blurring the conventional
boundaries, specifically the one between life and art. Therefore, I mainly
expand upon the novel’s hybrid stance towards modernism’s and especially
modernist avant-garde’s anti-representationality of art. I discuss the ways
the novel demonstrates an ability to make connections with the external
reality thereby problematising modernist idea of anti-representationality of
art. Then, I explore and examine the novel’s postmodernist perception of
meaning, specifically the historical meaning of an event, as constructed in
the process of artistic creation. The novel demonstrates and comments upon
how in literary realism and historiography narrative techniques and
strategies are used and abused in the process of producing and granting
meaning to historical events. Finally, in Chapter Five I summarise the most
important findings of the book. I also briefly anticipate and share some more
approaches and methodologies that can be applied to Chatterton and are
appropriate for further researches.
Historiographic Metafiction
Coined and applied by Linda Hutcheon, the term “historiographic
metafiction” refers to a type or mode of metafiction which juxtaposes the
fictive with the historical. Postmodernist re-presentation as it is, the mode
is the artistic manifestation of the problematisation of the representational
and anti-representational views. It exposes how we give meaning to
historical events and experiences through representations. This term reveals
historians and historiographers’ narrative strategies and techniques in
writing history and about it. Self-reflexive and auto-representational, it
explores the process of writing through which meanings and ideologies are
granted to historical events by the use of narrative techniques and strategies.
This type of fiction examines and points out how we create facts based upon
events through representations. It questions and renders problematic our
6 Chapter One
possibility of knowing the past. The mode is self-contradictory, paradoxical,

self-reflexive, hybrid, representational, auto-representational and consequently
problematic. It explores and questions how historiographers provide
meaning to historical events by examining and using the forms and contents
of the past as well as exposing the ways through which they select the
materials from the available sources and documents, critically analyse them
and finally put them into a narrative with arriving at conclusions.
Historiographic metafiction encompasses fiction, history and theory to offer
that all are human constructions (Hutcheon 1988, 5). Historiographic
metafiction is a reaction against modernism’s way of looking at a work of
art as totally autonomous. In effect, historiographic metafiction challenges
the view of the separation of art from culture and society by offering the
possibility of artistic representation.
Anti-representation/ Anti-referentiality
The term “anti-representation” or “anti-referentiality” is mostly associated
with modernist and especially the avant-garde’s mode of art which tries to
totally break from the outside world and previous conventions. Practitioners
and supporters of the view, instead, aim at writing a work of art which is
extremely auto-representational by constantly killing any illusion of
realism. They regard language not as a medium to reality, as the
representational view requires, but as a target. The anti-representational
view of art totally rejects any possibility of the work’s representationality.
It marks the death of the novel as representational. The obsession with, and
interest in, form and intrinsic features as well as the rejection of the notion
of content signal modernists’ anti-representational views. They practice the
idea of the work of art as totally autonomous. Standing in opposition to this
view, Hutcheon regards postmodernist art as problematically representational
and obsessed with history (1988, 52).
Representation/ Referentiality
The terms “representation” and “referentiality” can be used interchangeably.
The notion of representation known also as mimesis is mostly associated
with Aristotle’s ideas expressed in his Poetics. He points to the nature of art
as mimetic. In effect, the representational view implies that a work of art is
Introduction 7
a representative of the outside world. In other words, it is a small world

(microcosm) reflecting an outside larger world (macrocosm). The view has
played a significant role throughout history in literature and literary
theories, especially in literary realism. The idea postulates the existence of
a natural connection between a work of art and its referents (Quinn 2006,
360). However, the idea that art can represent reality has been challenged
put in a crisis in the last few decades.
Heterocosm
With regard to the etymology of the word, the term consists of “hetero”
meaning other or different and “microcosm” which is a small and complete
world that can represent a larger one. In effect, it denotes another or
alternative complete world. In modern and postmodern literary theory, the
term has come to be applied to the world a work of art creates during the
process of artistic creation. As opposed to the classical view of art as being
a microcosm which is representative or analogous to a larger world (the
macrocosm), heterocosm emphasises the autonomy of art. However, in
postmodern criticism and art it mainly refers to a world that the literary work
creates in the process of artistic creation which whilst referring to itself can
simultaneously refer to the outside world. Indeed, this other or alternative
world is created through fictive referents which are constructed within the
text by artistic strategies and techniques. This world is governed by a set of
rules created in the process of artistic construction which should be
acknowledged by the reader (Hutcheon 1980, 90). Heterocosm can be
achieved in different ways beyond the text’s possibility by referring to
external theories and ideas and to the text’s intertextuality. Historiographic
metafiction creates a heterocosm which problematises the representational
and anti-representational views of art, for whilst the text establishes
connections to the external reality, it refers to its own autonomy by the
conflation of the historical with self-reflexive fictionality.
Mise en abyme
“Mise en abyme” originally denotes a shield at the centre of which lies a
small model and copy of itself. Andre Gide applied the term to a literary
narrative technique. In its postmodernist usage, it is a narrative technique
8 Chapter One
that self-reflexively echoes and reflects or mirrors itself. In postmodernism,

it is used to expose that generally all representations are by nature self-
reflexive (Sim 2001, 318). It is a kind of self-reflexive mirroring. For
instance, a character in the narrative may feel confused and lost whilst
reading a story in which a character feels confused and lost when reading a
story. This self-reflexively mirrors and reflects the whole novel’s confusing
status.
Emplotment
The term “emplotment” is coined by Hayden White and denotes the
arrangement of the materials, the previous events, in the act of
historiography which determines the meaning of the narrative. He regards
history as a process of selecting and arranging information from the
available documents (1975, 5). Borrowing the notion from White, Hutcheon
contends that facts are constructed by the act of emplotment (1988, 92). By
implication, it refers to historiographers’ act of selecting, arranging and
putting historical materials from the available sources into a narrative.
Historiographic metafiction exposes the ways through which emplotments
result in the construction of facts.
Paratextuality
The term “paratextuality” is applied to the insertion of footnotes, epigraphs,
epilogues, titles, excerpts from magazines and journals, excerpts from other
texts in a literary work and so forth in the narrative. Put simply, it is the
insertion of history in literature. It is a convention rife in history-writing and
historiography. However, it is employed to a large extent in historiographic
metafiction to allow the conflation of the historical with the fictive.
Paratextuality, therefore, makes possible the representational view of
literature by providing a seemingly documentary authenticity within the
narrative. Also, it helps the narrative to parody the conventions of history-
writing and historiography. As Hutcheon contends, paratextuality relies
upon history’s paratextual conventions to subvert historians’ view of
documentary authenticity (1986, 303). In other words, it is a convention in
history upon which historiographic metafiction draws whilst taking distance
from it by questioning history’s authenticity, coherence and linearity.
Introduction 9
Moreover, the use of paratextual conventions in historiographic metafiction

provides postmodernist tendency in reviewing the past with a critical eye in
the light of the present.
Parody
The term “parody” is applied to a comic and playful or serious imitation of
a style of a writer, a work of art or characteristics of a serious genre.
Therefore, it is a critical re-consideration of a previous past. It is mainly
used not to criticise the parodied text, author or style, but to instead question
the contemporary issues or special discourses. As Hutcheon observes, in the
twentieth century works of art parody’s objective is not the hypotext (1985,
50). Although an imitation, parody marks differentiation within correspondence
(Hutcheon 1988, 124). In other words, it is a critical imitation which is self-
reflexively aware of its own nature. Thus, in the last few decades it has come
to be known as a double-coded and double-voiced deconstructive technique
which aims at creating a high degree of self-reflexivity. As an all-purpose
commonly-used technique or genre, parody in historiographic metafiction
helps to contest the previous conventions whilst still relying upon the very
conventions for its effects. It could be a genre, a technique or a series of
techniques within a work. For instance, the title of this study,
“postmodernist re-presentation,” offers a serious type of parodic technique.
Self-reflexivity
Self-reflexivity is a characteristic of many modern literary works and almost
all metafiction. Metafiction is more or less self-reflexive or involuted. That
is, it refers throughout the story to the process of writing and story making
(Abrams 1999, 235). In so doing, the writer attempts to keep readers aware
that they are reading a fictive story constructed by some certain narrative
techniques and strategies and that the story reflects upon itself rather than
upon the outside world. In effect, these may be achieved in a variety of ways
using paratexts, quotations, allusions, ironies, intervention of narrator or
real characters, mise en abyme and so on ad infinitum. Historiographic
metafiction’s self-reflexivity, laying bare narrative techniques and
strategies, demonstrates the process through which both writers of fiction
and historiographers attach especial meanings to historical events. Contrary
10 Chapter One
to modernism, historiographic metafiction’s conflation of the self-reflexive

with the historical functions to problematise the representationality and anti-
representationality of the work.
Under Erasure
Used by Derrida in his Of Grammatology (1967), “under erasure” (sous
rature) is a term applied to the act of writing a word and then crossing it out
but not its total deletion. What we then have on the paper is a word which
is crossed out (e.g. Derrida). Thus, the result is both the existence and the
effacement of the sign and its concept simultaneously. This feature, to
Derrida, is inherent in all signs. That is, signs have in themselves the trace
of the previous signs. Derrida uses the terms to explain his reliance upon
language and at the same time claims that language is unreliable (Sim 2001,
240-1). In metafiction, as a narrative strategy, it refers to the construction of
a part whilst withdrawing and rescinding the very part simultaneously. In
effect, the narrator may recount incidents and then cancels the very
incidents. Nonetheless, they still continue their existence. In other words,
they are put under erasure. Therefore, the result would be a fluctuation
between two states of affairs which are equally valid. The strategy is
frequently used in metafiction.
Postmodernist Re-presentation
Unlike modernist anti-representation, the postmodernist mode of
representation or alternatively, as I have termed it, “postmodernist re-
presentation” does not reject the representationality of art. It marks the
inescapability of art as a representational mode. Nonetheless, it questions
the representational view’s transparency and naturalness. Postmodernist re-
presentation suggests that reality exists but that we know it only through
representations. Postmodernist re-presentation recognises itself as
representation which makes its own referents instead of having direct
accessibility to the real. Therefore, as opposed to the realist concept of
representation that postulates a natural and immediate connection between
the work and what it represents, postmodernist re-presentation reveals that
reality is constructed through artistic representations. However, it
acknowledges the representationality of art. In other words, it crosses and
Introduction 11
blurs the boundary between representational and anti-representational

views. To achieve these crossings, postmodernist re-presentation relies
greatly upon parody and frequently makes representation its subject matter.
It is a site where modernist self-reflexivity and autonomy meets with
historical and realist representationality.
CHAPTER TWO
POSMODERNISM AND THE PROBLEMATISATION

OF THE REPRESENTATION OF REALITY
Introduction to Postmodern Theories:

Which Postmodernism?
“[A]s a cultural activity that can be discerned in most art forms
and many currents of thought today, what I want to call
postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely
historical, and inescapably political.” (Hutcheon 1988, 4)
Strikingly enough, the term “postmodern,” when defined, can be misleading

and at times may cause misunderstandings, for it is a word of broad
conception. One may possibly encounter various definitions. Such
differences and diversities mark the heterogeneity, hybridity, provisionality
and multiplicity lying at the heart of this phenomenon. Therefore, to have a
better understanding of the term we can define postmodern or postmodernism
with respect to three major areas. Firstly, in terms of history, the term
postmodern, as the prefix “post” indicates, has come to designate mostly the
latter part of the twentieth century characterised by “the prodigious
expansion of modern capitalism into what has been termed postmodern/late
capitalism” or global consumerism due to the domination of later capitalist
system (Bağlama 2018, 11). In this sense, it is known as a period during
which the mass media and other means of communication were employed
to make impossible the distinction between the real and the spurious
fabricating what Baudrillard calls “simulacrum” (1981) resulting in mass
consensus and conformity. Consequently, notions of truth, reality, validity,
originality, authenticity and depth have lost their traditionally attached
values. Thus, the term encompasses historical cultural, social and political
concepts. In this light, it refers to an historical phenomenon following and
as the consequence of, modernism and the Second World War. In culture, it
Posmodernism and the Problematisation of the Representation of Reality 13
is characterised by a heterogeneity of voices, mass production and popular

culture. Since the term postmodernity has many aspects in common with
postmodernism and the adjective postmodern interchangeably refers to both
postmodernism and postmodernity, its brief explanation seems pertinent.
Postmodernism normally refers to “cultural and artistic” areas, whereas
postmodernity is used to indicate “the more general social and political”
areas (Hutcheon 2006, 119, 121; Eagleton 1996, vii). Likewise, postmodern
and postmodernist are interchangeable; however, the former may be applied
to any phenomenon pertaining to the contemporary, after modernism,
whereas the latter implies a sense of self-consciousness in putting into
practice postmodern theoretical issues and is mainly and restrictively
applied to artistic works. In consequence, we would rather speak of novels
such as Chatterton as postmodernist novels, for they seem to be artistic
representations of postmodern theories.
Secondly, in terms of theory generated by the first, the term
postmodern or postmodernism has been applied to the various writings of
Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Michael Foucault and Roland Barthes, to
name but a few, who were also known as poststructuralists in literary theory
and philosophy. Concerned with different readings of a text, these
poststructuralists gave definitive shape to postmodern theories. As a leading
figure in shaping theories of deconstruction, Derrida holds that the whole
Western philosophy has been founded and functioned upon binary
oppositions implying a hierarchy; that is, in each binary opposition one
takes the centre and is superior or privileged (e.g. man/woman, good/evil,
day/night, white/black and so on). He criticises Western thought of creating
logocentrism, a belief in the existence of a centre by making metaphysical
notions such as “God, reason, origin, being, essence, truth, humanity,
beginning, end and self” which determine the way we think and act (Bressler
2007, 120). Derrida, accordingly, undertakes to deconstruct the binary
oppositions to stress différance and in so doing to arrive at undecidability
or what is known as aporia. His, as well as other postsructuralists’,
deconstruction has provided a new reading strategy. Jean-François
Lyotard’s idea of metanarratives–fixed ideologies or centres–and his
preference for little narratives or the marginalised is closely related to these
literary approaches. In a nutshell, in this sense postmodernism is “incredulity
toward metanarratives” (Lyotard 1984, xxiv) reminding us that the outside
14 Chapter Two
world is ideologically constructed and made by us, not given to us. Here,
the works of figures such as Lyotard, Frederick Jameson and Jean
Baudrillard who tried to explain, analyse and account for the present
dominant situation, postmodern era, shine.
Thirdly, in terms of art and literature, postmodern or as suggested
earlier postmodernist is applied to the numerous and various works of
Thomas Pynchon, Tom Stoppard, John Fowles, Don DeLillo, Salman
Rushdie, Robert Coover, Margaret Atwood and Peter Ackroyd, to name but
a few. They are labeled under a plethora of titles, such as Magic Realism,
Hysterical Realism, Metafiction and Fabulation. They stand at odds with
both the intellectualism and elitism of modernist esoteric high art and
traditional theories of art and storytelling. They contest artistic representation
prescribed by realism, as well as the universalising concepts of liberal
humanism in favor of self-conscious, self-contradictory, self-reflexive,
paradoxical and popular-esoteric postmodernist works. They attempt to be
privy to their own status as fiction and artifice. Metafiction, as a (or the)
major postmodernist form of art, marks the problematisation of the
representation of reality. Such metafictive works may be referred to as
“theoretical novel” (Currie 1988, 49), “narcissistic” (Hutcheon 1980, 1) or
what one might prefer to name theory-in-practice narratives, for they are
artistic manifestation in literary narratives of postmodern theories. In other
words, they are deeply concerned with theoretical issues, especially in the
realm of postmodern theories. Thus, far beyond the linguistic obsession of
poststructuralism, critics including Linda Hutcheon, Patricia Waugh and
John Barth aim at analysing this postmodernist mode of narrative which can
be briefly discussed here.
Since metafiction came into being and developed, its interpretation
has generated hot debate. Realism is an inadequate means of depicting the
contemporary socio-cultural situation. Likewise, poststructuralism’s
linguistic strategy of reading in approaching metafiction cannot be
sufficient because, as mentioned earlier, this mode of fiction is highly self-
reflexive, self-conscious, auto-referential or auto-representational, as well
as representational in its matter and form. To the consternation of many
critics, metafictional novels are not just mere texts and should not be treated
as just “a tissue of signs” as Barthes does (2000, 149). They emphasise
literariness or narrative strategies and techniques as one might call it in
addition to contesting language as being able to represent reality,

simultaneously converging the borderline between writing and criticism,
life and art, as well as fiction and reality. Consequently, a new poetics
derived from metafiction may attribute the possibility of having two
opposite interpretations not just to the language but to the techniques and
strategies employed for the purpose of the problematisation of reality. This
seems to have been condoned so far. Better to say, metafiction makes
explicit the process by which multiple contradictory interpretations are
possible. The mode has brought about its own criticism. This requires what
Hutcheon refers to as “a ‘poetics’ of postmodernism” (1988, iv); that is, a
new criticism or reading strategy that can justify for this mode. As she puts
it, “[l]iterary history suggests that new critical languages are necessarily
developed in order to come to terms with new literary forms (1980, 36).
Therefore, one should be in search of new theory which can apply to this
mode of writing, that is, metafiction.
In this sense, postmodern criticism and theory is basically
concerned with analysing a work of art in order to make its dominant
totalising, naturalising and internalising discourses or metanarratives
explicit; to de-centre, de-naturalise and de-totalise them; to regard the
marginalized narratives; and to arrive at uncertainty concerning their
validity, authenticity, legitimacy and possibility of any representational
view of language that lay claims to an ultimate reality. Postmodern theory,
in its broad sense including socio-cultural, political, artistic and literary, is
primarily concerned with self-contradictory, self-conscious and/or self-
reflexive narratives that raise questions as to what reality or “natural” is
(2000, xi). As an especial type of narration that Hutcheon calls “historiographic
metafiction” (2000, ix) it explores the ways by which historical reality is
constructed. Historiographic metafiction is an investigation of how this
especial form of postmodernist art underlines, in its ironic way, the
realisation of the process in which ideology of any kind grants meaning to
historical events and to our historical and literary knowledge and
experiences. As a postmodernist mode of representation, historiographic
metafiction renders this meaning-granting process, which might not have
otherwise been realised, problematic.
Therefore, in this book I aim to develop a methodology for
understanding this new poetics, which is herein referred to as postmodernist
16 Chapter Two
re-presentation, drawn upon theories put forward by Linda Hutcheon,

Patricia Waugh and Hayden White, to name a few, in analysing Chatterton.
I cite numerous literary theories and philosophers to avoid limiting the
perception of postmodernism and metafiction as a homogeneous
phenomenon. However, my major concern in the course of the book is with
the idea of postmodernist re-presentation in metafiction. In the following
section, I discuss and define postmodernist re-presentation in detail.
The Representation of Reality and its Critique

“I can endure death. It is the representation of death I cannot
bear.” (Ackroyd 1993, 2, 86 emphasis added)
Throughout history, men and women of letters and thought have been
obsessed with the representational view of literature alongside with its
critique. For many it has almost been a truism that art must reflect the reality
of life. Nonetheless, and seemingly an “axiomatic fact,” the idea that
literature can represent reality has been questioned. Moreover, in the last
few decades there has been a great inclination towards understanding the
literary representations of reality, shown with modernists and especially by
the avant-garde. However, postmodernist metafiction puts both representational
and anti-representational views of art into question, not in a sense that it
rejects them but in that it is simultaneously neither and both of them. In
effect, paradoxically as it may seem, postmodernist metafiction is both
representational and anti-representational. In other words, it signals the
problematisation of the representation of reality.
Furthermore, such a literary discussion of representation begins
with the ancient Greeks. The idea of the representation of reality is of no
exception. The representational or mimetic view of literature dates back to
two philosophical thinkers: Aristotle and Plato. Yet, this view is more of
Aristotelian origin than of Platonic which is in effect “idealistic” (Selden
1988, 8). Nevertheless, one should be cautious enough not to put them into
neatly labelled binaries, because, as contradictory as it may appear,
Aristotle’s view is idealistic too. Aristotle’s defence of poetry offered what
is known as mimesis. He elaborates upon the idea by differentiation in
means, models (objects) and manners of imitation. In other words, in so
doing and asserting remarks such as “[i]mitation is natural to man”
(Aristotle 7) he consequently postulates the imitative and representational

function of poetry (literature). His view is that a poet should present what is
probable (Aristotle 17-18); that is, literature must be true to life. By
comparing literature to history, he holds the former as universal and the
latter particular, hence, a belief in universality of literature. Such imitative
and mimetic view of literature has continued its dominance and gaining
prominence in realism that seeks to portray the weariness, dreariness,
ugliness and heinousness of the life of the middle class.
However, what has come to be known as the crisis or critique of
the representation of reality, that reached its acme in poststructuralism, was
mainly triggered by Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic model and
observation of the arbitrariness of the relation between the signifier and the
signified. As he puts it, “[t]he bond between the signifier and the signified
is arbitrary” (Saussure 2004, 62). Saussure’s view was a turning point. It
received an especial attention amongst poststructuralists. Linguistically
speaking, the crisis rises when there is no natural relation between the world
and the language which is supposed to represent the world. As far as
arbitrariness goes, structuralism and post-structuralism are on par with each
other. Nonetheless, whereas Saussure stipulates that the relation is fixed,
Derrida goes so far as to cast doubt upon the idea by offering différance, a
constant delay of the signified and subversion of the hierarchy. Moreover,
Derrida’s remark that, “there is nothing outside the text” (1976, 163), an
insistence upon what was already suggested by Formalists, sets up an
opposition not to the real world but to the ostensibly objectivity and ability
of language to represent reality. For Derrida, the representation of reality is
no longer possible when there is nothing outside. Consequently, auto-
referentiality–the idea that any text refers not to the outside world but to
itself as well as to other texts (intertextuality)–has received an especial
acclaim in recent decades. As inferred from Derrida, postmodernism
questions from within. Therefore, as indicated in this section, the myth of a
possibility of language to objectively represent reality thus came to almost
an end. In the next part, I explicate postmodernist re-presentation in view of
postmodernist narrative.
18 Chapter Two
The Problematisation of the Representation of Reality:

Postmodernist Re-presentation vs. Representation
and Anti-representation
“The poet does not merely recreate or describe the world. He
actually creates it.” (Ackroyd 1993, 115)
Postmodernist re-presentation cannot be enunciated and discussed in a

vacuum, for it is the upshot of our dominant cultural and social conditions.
Therefore, the notion is exhausted with respect to realism’s representational
and modernism’s anti-representational views. This view is firstly a reaction
against realist conventions and mode of discourse in general and of writing
in particular and the-today-overriding liberal humanism’s totalising notions.
Secondly, it contests the autonomy of art put forward by modernists as well
as the avant-garde’s anti-representation. Advertently and intentionally
paradoxical, then, postmodernist re-presentation is neither of them whilst at
the same time encompassing the two. Thus, in what follows postmodernist
modes of reference, herein referred to as postmodernist re-presentation,
having arisen in the wake of postmodernist metafiction and resulting in the
problematisation of the representation of reality, is addressed and
demarcated with respect to realism’s representational and modernism’s anti-
representational modes of reference.
Moreover, by postmodernist re-presentation I mean the
problematisation of the representational as well as anti-representational
views through an ironic and parodic re-presentation, keeping both views in
a crisis. It is a representation of multiple varieties which “uses and abuses,”
establishes and “subverts” what it strives to contest, question and challenge
(Hutcheon 1988, 3), whether it be the conventions of realism or those of
modernism which have remained inviolable and now turned into
metanarratives over the years. Moreover, it does all of this simultaneously.
Postmodernist re-presentation aims at making contradictions, lying at the
heart of realism and any mode of representation, manifest whilst leaving
them instead of trying to resolve them, as does realism. It does not play
havoc with conventions. Nor does it naïvely accept them. It is not a
rejection, as some of postmodernism’s detractors may claim, of what is
known as grand-narratives whose aim is to naturalise, universalise,
generalise and totalise (Hutcheon 1988, x). It is but a means of questioning
them. It makes attempts to de-totalise and “de-naturalize” what we have

always thought of as “natural” as a means of divulging to the reader that
they are nothing but “cultural” constructs (Hutcheon 2000, 2). Besides, as
the prefix “re” in the term re-presentation implies, it presupposes the
presence of the past: past (or previous) time, work, style, convention and so
on. Be they of realism or of modernism, it plays the conventions off against
each other in order to question and problematise any possibility of
representation of reality.
In metafiction, realism’s apparent transparency, referred to as the
natural or the real, recognised as conventional artistic forms, has been under
scrutiny but not denied. Thus, postmodernist re-presentation tends to make
inquiries into how the real or the natural is portrayed and constructed and
how we come to know it. As Hutcheon states, “[t]here is nothing natural
about ‘the real’ and there never was” (2000, 33). Postmodernist re-
presentation, that is metafiction by implication, does not reject the existence
of the real. Nevertheless, it discloses that such representation is a cultural,
not natural, product made through representations, hence, problematic. It,
therefore, designates the concept of process, that is, the process of
constructing and perceiving these apparently real natural truisms.
In fact, within postmodernist re-presentation, realism’s apparently
unproblematic natural transparency “makes explicit the implicit
problematic of realism” (Lodge 1955, 154). This is made possible through
re-presenting the process of fiction-making:
Any text that draws the reader’s attention to its process of

construction by frustrating his or her conventional expectations
of meaning and closure problematizes more or less explicitly the
ways in which narrative codes–whether “literary” or “social”–
artificially construct apparently “real” and imaginary worlds in
the terms of particular ideologies while presenting these as
transparently “natural” and “eternal.” (Waugh 1986, 22)
Not only is the ability of novel in reflecting reality challenged, but also
liberal humanist notions such as universality, originality, authority and the
natural as fixed and sacred. Besides, postmodernist re-presentation contests
liberal humanism’s attempt to separate the artistic from the real. It does so
by making manifest the paradoxes in the integration of the aesthetic and the
20 Chapter Two
real (Hutcheon 1988, viii), be it political, historical or social. Moreover, a

composite of contradictory notions as it is, postmodernism problematises
realism’s objectivity, (as well as modernism’s) unity and closure through
conflation of aesthetic formal self-reflexivity together with historical
backgrounds. Hutcheon observes “[w]hat postmodernism does is to
denaturalize both realism’s transparency and modernism’s reflexive
response, while retaining (in its typically complicitous critical way) the
historically attested power of both” (2000, 32). Paradoxically as it may
appear, it adverts to its referentiality and auto-referentiality at the same time.
Therefore, resolving these contradictions, an action in which realism seeks
solace, is abandoned. This is best done in the conflation of the historical and
the fictive.
Thus, it is a re-presentation of representation. In other words, as
the hyphen in the term re-presentation suggests, it stops to re-think, re-
examine, re-view, re-consider, re-meet, re-visit, re-read, re-work and re-
present (to present again but ironically and critically) the representation of
reality. Re-presentation, accordingly, imitates in order to question what it
imitates to make the reader aware that any representational view of art is
problematic. As Hutcheon argues, it “is less a departure from the mimetic
novelistic tradition than a reworking of it” (1980, 5 emphasis added). For
that reason, to claim that a novel is an artistic production which has nothing
to do with our life and the external reality, as in modernism, is a fallacy due
to its very paradoxically imitative characteristics. Closely related to this
example is postmodernist re-presentation’s preoccupation with respect to
two levels. The first is its aesthetic engagement with language. The second
is its referentiality, worldliness. Hutcheon points out the two aspects of a
text in that its “own paradox is that it is both narcissistically self-reflexive
and yet focused outward, oriented toward the reader” (1980, 7). Therefore,
it calls upon readers as a co-creator of the work in the process of creation
initiating them into the act of writing. The former marks postmodernism’s
autonomy and auto-referentiality or what is known as modernism’s anti-
representation, whereas the latter subverts it by marking its mimetic relation
to the real world:
[I]n all fiction, language is representational, but of a fictional

“other” world, a complete and coherent “heterocosm” created
by the fictive referents of the signs. In metafiction, however, this
fact is made explicit and, while he reads, the reader lives in a

world which he is forced to acknowledge as fictional. (Hutcheon
1980, 7)
Put briefly, postmodernism’s self-reflexivity proposes that the work be

treated as an artefact, whilst references to the reader’s real life and
experience acknowledge the work’s still representational relation to the real
life, and thus, the problematisation of the representation of reality.
In addition, since many references are made to acknowledge its
status as a creative, imaginative, constructed artefact, metafiction creates its
own independent world. Nevertheless, it is not anti-representational as
modernism claims; however, its referent is artistically created within the
fictive world. Its “representation is of a fictive referent” (Hutcheon 1980,
97). Thus, it does refer to itself. It is a mirror held up no longer to nature but
to itself. Consequently, any desperate attempt to assess it in terms of its truth
value will be of no avail. To do so is to treat the work of art as anything but
artifice (Hutcheon 1980, 95). For, metafiction is constantly aware of its
status as artifice. Distraught about the combination of the fictive and the
real, traditional readers (readers of the realist novel), as is their wont, fail in
their attempt to interpret a literary work as direct access to reality. Hence,
postmodernist re-presentation imparts the process of its own creation
through which meaning is created, that is, constructed to the reader.
In addition, there is a distinction between realism’s view of art as
a product and postmodernism’s as a process. In the former, the traditional
reader, as it is expected, comes to recognise “the products being imitated”
to acknowledge similarities they make to the real life (Hutcheon 1980, 38),
that is, verisimilitude. This is suggestively referred to as “a mimesis of
product” (Hutcheon 1980, 38) in which the attention is drawn not upon the
process through which reality is made but upon the reader’s passively
accepting its semblance to the real life and experience. Often ignored or
depreciated, by contrast, has been “a mimesis of process” (Hutcheon 1980,
39) which in metafiction is of cardinal significance. Accordingly,
postmodernist re-presentation implies and necessitates acknowledging the
process of construction. In other words, this process involves assembling
the artistic materials together in an especial order (artistically) determined
by the writer by disclosing and exposing the techniques (narrative
techniques or strategies) as well as the process of reading. This constantly
22 Chapter Two
keeps the reader in a quandary as to the identification of the work as

representational or anti-representational. The attention is, therefore, drawn
to the process involving narrative techniques and strategies.
Closely related to metafiction’s involvement with its own
construction process is the dichotomy of telling and showing. Realism and
modernism show, whereas postmodernism tells. Waugh compares
metafiction with modernism in that “modernism pursued impersonality
(‘showing’), such contemporary metafictional texts pursue Personality, the
ironic flaunting of the Teller” (1986, 131). This implies two points. First,
metafiction is a telling, rather than showing. Second, it is fictive and
imaginary. Paradoxically, through telling it exposes its own fictionality and
autonomy.
Moreover, modernism’s aesthetic autonomy has its root in
modernity’s concept of human identity. The concept is in turn derived from
“liberal humanism” and “capitalism” (Hutcheon 2006, 120). It assumes
“human” as an independent “unique, coherent, rational, autonomous
identity” (Hutcheon 2006, 120) which is the only determinant of meaning.
Correspondingly, modernism decrees the idea of artist as an autonomous
disinterested impersonal “catalyst” (Eliot 2000, 35) who, as the source of
meaning, creates an aesthetic autonomous work through formal
manipulation of materials. Nonetheless, poststructuralism confutes this
credo by proclaiming language as the constructor of human identity.
Poststructuralism states that identity and meaning are formed in a system of
differentiation which implies dependence as opposed to autonomy. As
Umberto Eco puts it, “[n]o fictional world could be totally autonomous,
since it would be impossible for it to outline a maximal and consistent state
of affairs . . .” (1994, 221). In the same way, one cannot postulate an
imaginary work of art as a self-sufficient, independent world.
Nevertheless, metafiction indicates both aesthetic autonomy
through self-reflexivity and language but not the individual as a meaning-
granting significant indicator by subverting humanism’s notion of
autonomous identity. It self-reflexively has one eye to its own form
suggesting fictionality and the other to historical events, references to the
empirical life. Rejecting the text as totally autonomous, Hutcheon says
“[t]he most extreme autonomous universes of fantasy are still referential; if
they were not the reader could not imagine their existence” (1980, 77). To
be successfully decoded, then, experimental fiction of any variety requires

an audience to make sense out of it by drawing an analogy between the
fictive world and that of the empirical. Hence, the reconciliation of the
historical and the fictive problematises both modernism and
poststructuralism’s anti-representation and realism’s representation.
Postmodernist re-presentation holds that neither the world in which we live
nor the fictive world of a novel are unreal, but that both are human
constructs, granted meanings through the process of representation. It is not
that the real does not exist, but that it is neither universal, natural, fixed, nor
given to us; it is but created by us.
In addition, anti-representation has its root in modernism’s another
key concept: loss of meaning. Whereas modernism laments the loss of
meaning, postmodernist re-presentation asserts the existence of meaning;
however, as postmodernism points out, we create meaning. Hutcheon asks,
“[i]s there anything to which we cannot grant meaning?” (1988, 52). One
can hardly give a negative answer. Moreover, when we do have meaning-
granting, then we are in the purview of social, cultural, political and
ideological contexts in which meaning is generated, hence, worldliness,
representation, mimesis and reference to the real world. Yet, postmodernist
re-presentation calls our attention to the provisional, human-constructing
feature of meaning (52) produced through representation. Therefore, it is
problematically autonomous whilst remaining referential, representational
and mimetic.
Furthermore, such a focus upon the process should not lead the
reader to diverge from the fact that metafiction is still imitative and mimetic.
Thus, a note of caution needs to be made here: “auto-representation is still
representation” (Hutcheon 1980, 39), and thus both imitative and mimetic.
Therein lies postmodernism’s other concern: postmodernism is not anti-
representational as modernism and the avant-garde by and large are.
Scholes’s comments that “[a]fter the first myth, all fiction became
imitative,” in that they all imitate other fictions (1995, 24), indicates
metafiction’s imitative and mimetic quality. Postmodernist re-presentation,
however, subverts the very notion, yet endeavors to formally and
thematically problematise both representation and anti-representation.
Chatterton takes representation of reality as its theme through Wychwood’s
investigation of the true representation of the portrait which seems to be
24 Chapter Two
representing Thomas Chatterton, whilst it formally experiences the

representation of reality by dealing with the life of Chatterton leading to its
problematisation. Besides, its allusions to real events in the lives of
Chatterton and George Meredith make representation possible, whereas the
presence of fictive events and characters confirms the novel’s auto-
representationality.
Also, postmodernist re-presentation discloses that modes of
representation are ideological constructs; therefore, they cannot help being
engaged in political, cultural and social matters. In Hutcheon’s words
“postmodern art cannot but be political” (2000, 3). Likewise, Louis
Althusser had already defined ideology as “a system . . . of representations
. . .” (1969, 231). To avoid the illusion of mass consensus of liberal
humanism and our contemporary capitalism, postmodernist re-presentation
aims at multiplicity of voices and multiple equally possible interpretations.
It renders patent and problematic ideological didacticism lurking behind any
representation, be it realism or our contemporary capitalism, which sets to
mold and form public opinion leading to mass consensus.
As an answer to poststructuralists who, like de Man, deny
representational relation between fiction and reality, Lodge as a novelist
states:
[M]y fiction has not ‘for ever taken leave of reality’ but is in
some significant sense a representation of the real world, and
that if my readers did not recognize in my novels some truths
about the real behavior of, say, academics or Roman Catholics,
I should feel I had failed, and so would my readers. (1955, 150)
This is what metafictionists aim for. Postmodernist re-presentation obscures

the boundary between the real and the fictive. It integrates “autonomy and
worldliness” (Hutcheon 1988, 45). For that reason, we are a step ahead of
poststructuralism’s anti-representation towards postmodernist re-presentation
taking in both classical and realist representation as well as modernism
(Formalism, the avant-garde) along with poststructuralism’s anti-
representation. Put in a nutshell, postmodernist re-presentation is a parody
of representation of reality. Parody draws upon familiar conventions to
create unconventionality. It imitates in order to create distance from what it
imitates. Therefore, it cannot be anti-mimetic. Parody is discussed in detail

later in this chapter.
The avant-garde as an extreme, ardent adherent of the anti-
representational view of art should also be brought into consideration.
Revolutionary as it is, the avant-garde is a total break from, and violation
of, the past for a celebration of the future. It “destroys, defaces the past”
(Eco 1995, 173). Its atrocity is oriented towards the previous and prevailing
agreed conventions whilst in search of revolution, experimentalism,
innovation, creation, novelty, originality and autonomy. By contrast,
postmodernist re-presentation is a return to the past; it makes an ironic and
parodic use of it. In the former the writer “indirectly criticizes past forms,”
whereas the latter (reflected in metafiction) is directly aimed at the process
of the construction of fiction (McCaffery 1995, 182). As reflected in
Dadaism, the avant-garde or anti-novel rejects the past as passé by
discarding its conventions. In contradiction, metafiction formally and
thematically draws upon the agreed artistic conventions so as to challenge
them. It first establishes autonomy to problematise it. Experimentalism
entails undermining certain artistic forms and the introduction of alternative
techniques and strategies (McCaffery 1995, 182). In this sense, metafiction
is experimental too. Oddly enough, it is both a constant break from
modernist and the avant-garde’s revolutionary conventions and forms which
have become obsolete and simultaneously an unvarying continuation and
exercise of them:
Metafictional texts show that literary fiction can never imitate

or “represent” the world but always imitates or ‘represents’ the
discourses which in turn construct that world. However, because
the medium of all literary fiction is language, the “alternative
worlds” of fiction, as of any other universe of discourse, can
never be totally autonomous. Their linguistic construction
(however far removed from realism they may be) always
implicitly evokes the contexts of everyday life. These too are
then revealed as linguistically constructed. (Waugh 1986, 100)
Its experimentalism–radical, revolutionary and ahead of its time in

undercutting conventions–testifies to its autonomy, whereas its reliance
upon the established conventions for parodic purpose invalidates its own
autonomy.
26 Chapter Two
Postmodernist re-presentation does not deny the past; instead, it

brings the past to the fore in a dialogue with the present. It is imperative to
not create another centre, ideology or metanarrative in opposition to the
avant-garde’s craving for novelty, and originality, which are brought under
question in postmodernism. Whereas modernism and especially the avant-
garde are usually assessed and accordingly valued in terms of the degree of
their departure from the conventions to claim aesthetic autonomy,
postmodernist re-presentation proclaims any total break from other works
and the real world impossible and fallacious. It does so self-reflexively
through its ironic and parodic reliance upon the past, be it artistic
conventions or real events.
Therefore, postmodernist metafiction has made the crisis of
representation manifest in that it is neither representational nor anti-
representational but re-presentational. In what follows, I explore
historiographic metafiction where the real meets with the fictive giving rise
to the problematisation of the representation of reality.
Historiographic Metafiction: “Re-presenting”

or “Representing” Reality?
“‘Events which are tragedies for us . . . are just changes for
them’.” (Ackroyd, 1995 157)
In its attempt to problematise the representation of reality, metafiction is a

site where borders and boundaries, pertaining to especial conventions and
belief systems such as liberal humanism, including the literary and non-
literary are blurred. Amongst these boundaries is the one between the
historical (the real) and the literary (the artistic, the aesthetic) best reflected
in, to use Hutcheon’s terminology, historiographic metafiction. As the term
suggests, these forms of fiction are those novels which self-reflexively, self-
contradictorily and self-consciously bring the past, historical events, to the
fore meeting it with the fictive, that is, the literary. As a result, they exploit
and subvert conventions of realism and modernism, which is not a radical
contravention of these conventions but an ironic and parodic re-working of
them with a critical purpose. In the discussion which follows, I discuss how
the conflation of the historical and the literary results in the problematisation
of the representation of reality.
Historiographic metafiction has turned away from the theories and

standpoints that see history as a monolith, universal and unified with direct
access to the past and reality to embrace views shared by the New
Historicists and by poststructuralists separately. One such theory is a
response to the traditional separation of the literary from the historical as
stated by Aristotle and modernism’s (and specifically the avant-garde’s)
differentiating the literary from the non-literary. Postmodernism shares the
New Historicism belief “that history is one of many discourses, or ways of
seeing and thinking about the world” (Bressler 2007, 214). It views both
literature and history as cultural discourses. Both the New Historicists and
their British counterparts, Cultural Materialists, reject the artistic autonomy
and regard literature as a cultural construct. As with poststructuralists, they
view history, akin to literature, as discourse-oriented, part of culture, and
thus ideological. Similar to postmodernists, they believe that “[l]iterature is
not simply a product of history, it also actively makes history” (Bertens
2001, 177). In other words, and undermining the long-held belief in
separation of literature from history, New Historicism decrees that literature
and history are similar in producing meaning. This implies the fictionality
of history. New Historicists are of the opinion that “[i]n literature can be
found history and in history, much literature” (Bressler 2007, 214).
Historiographic metafiction, correspondingly, juxtaposes the two to offer
the historical as fictive and to manifest both as ideological systems being
able to generate certain meanings through narrating. This re-working of the
past provides an appropriate ground for “re-working of the forms and
contents of the past” (Hutcheon 1988, 5). This act reveals that even the most
realistic and true-to-life novels or historical texts are works of art. In so
doing, historiographic metafictionists self-reflexively lay bare the artistic
conventions through which the illusion of the representationality of these
texts is constructed. Artistic conventions of the past and the present are
revealed to challenge the ideology “in which they find a home–and a
meaning” (Hutcheon 1988, 9), that is, that of liberal humanism. Hence, by
the introduction and blurring of the historical and the literary, the view of
history as a true-to-life, realistic, monolithic and comprehensible entity is
no longer cogent and tenable.
Nevertheless, from New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, as
for structuralists and poststructuralists, no difference is made between a
28 Chapter Two
literary text and other texts (Bertens 2001, 177). Metafictionists highlight
the aesthetic and literary aspects of their work through self-reflexivity,
manifestation of the devices. As discussed earlier, it also suggests
referentiality as opposed to poststructuralism’s anti-referentiality by
providing references to real events. It poses questions as to how statements
such as “Albert Einstein was a physicist” within the narrative should be
treated. In addition to these types of statements, historiographic metafiction
involves the reader in a dilemma by introducing statements that refer to
imaginary, fictive characters, events, time and places, in so doing creating
the minimum plausibility resulting in the autonomy or anti-referentiality of
the work. This is to assert any mode of representation, be it literary texts or
history, is fictive, and therefore an artefact. However, it does not reject the
work’s status as a representational mode. Nor does it simply bring the
historical to the level of fiction. It both points to the fictionality of the two
while asserting their possible referentiality. As a result, conflation of the
literary and the historical suggests both referentiality and anti-referentiality,
hence, problematisation of representation. In short, history as well as
literature re-presents reality.
Historiographic metafiction suggests any representation throughout
history is constructed by human beings. It strives for demonstrating that, in
Hayden White’s terms, “every representation of the past has specifiable
ideological implications” (1990, 69). Ideologically grounded, these so-
called classical representations of literature and history have had an interest
in producing meanings which attribute to maintaining the status quo. As
White observes, “[h]istory becomes history of exclusion. He [the historian]
makes his story by including some events and excluding others, by stressing
some and subordinating others. This process of exclusion, stress, and
subordination is carried out in the interest of constituting a story of a
particular kind” (1975, 6). Foucault, instead, suggests a story of a
multiplicity of narratives as opposed to the traditional histories which try to
obviate differences to create a firm story (Currie 1995, 12-13). Like fiction,
history in postmodernism is considered as a discourse by which “we
construct our versions of reality” (Hutcheon 1988, 40), that is, meaning.
History as a helpful realist model and an example of a set of
metanarratives offering certainty, eternalness, coherence, unity and
referentiality which formally and thematically lay claims to reality is
employed in postmodernist historiographic metafiction to accentuate its

fictionality and is, therefore, acknowledged as a human construct. As a
narrative form in prose, history resembles realist novels. Both necessitate
narrative form and detailed objective accounts of characters and events in
chronological order. “Realism presents history as linear chronology,
presents characters in the terms of liberal humanism” (Waugh 1986, 128),
as does historiography. Historiographic metafiction raises questions about
objective recording, that is, documentary realism which creates the illusion
of plausibility in both literary realism and historiography by playing the
realist conventions off against each other. In historiographic metafiction,
linear chronology, omniscient point of view and documentary realism of
both literary realism and historiography are examined to make their
ideological grounds explicit. This is done by self-reflexive exploitation and
simultaneously subversion of the realist conventions shared by literary
realism and historiography at the level of form and subject matter.
Furthermore, history in postmodernism is similar to fiction
because it is treated as a discourse through which “we construct our versions
of reality” (Hutcheon 1988, 40), that is, meaning. Not in the sense that
certain events under scrutiny did not happen but that what these events mean
is determined by the way they are narrated. It is not a denial of the existence
of the past, however, “its accessibility to us now is entirely conditioned by
textuality” (16). Therefore, both require narration, text. What historiographic
metafiction aims at is how historical events are turned to seemingly neutral
facts. In Hutcheon’s terms “the meaning and shape are not in the events, but
in the systems which make those past ‘events’ into present historical ‘facts’”
(1988, 89). In delineating how facts are constructed, borrowing from White,
Hutcheon refers to the idea of emplotment by which is meant the
configuration of events in the narrative. As she states, “[i]t is
historiography’s explanatory and narrative emplotments of past events that
construct what we consider historical facts” (1988, 92). The past is
conceived through the narrative and produced in a milieu with a set of
preponderant ideologies. The ways in which real events are narrativised
condition their meanings. In effect, historiography “imposes a meaning on
the past” (Hutcheon 1988, 97) and is revealed in historiographic metafiction
by self-reflexive conflation of the literary and the historical.
30 Chapter Two
This blurring of historical and literary boundaries also suggests

both referentiality of art and artificiality of history and reality. White refers
to the overlap of the fictive and the historical in that both are “verbal
artifacts” (2000, 291). The two are mimetic and expressive. He regards
history as fictive and fiction as referential (2000, 292). Nonetheless, while
he points to two features of correspondence and coherence as their site of
overlap, metafictionists seek to problematise the notions and to reveal that
they are not intrinsic features, but that they have been foisted upon us. In
other words, documentary narrative strategies of both literary realism and
historiography create the illusion that the text is comprehensible and
corresponding to the real world. Moreover, history has been postulated as
mimetic genre–a showing implying liberal humanist notions such as
objectivity and impersonality in the vein of literary realism. On the contrary,
historiographic metafiction casting a doubt upon the view is more of a
telling. Implied by Aristotle, diegesis entails telling as in the epic genre in
which a narrator recounts the story, whereas mimesis indicates showing as
in drama, presenting the action objectively and impersonally (quoted in
Wake 2006, 19). Not unlike Lodge’s differentiation between “telling” and
“showing” (1992, 122), metafiction approximates the diegetic model, for its
principle draws upon self-reflexivity to call attention towards the process of
its construction. Historiographic metafiction asserts that all seemingly
realistic representations, such as history, are a kind of telling rather than
showing by self-reflexively pointing out the process of storytelling to
highlight the artificial and artistic process of construction, hence,
historiography as artifice. In effect, ideologies that lie buried in the stories
(history and realism)–especially those of liberal humanism including
objectivity, impersonality, universality, truth, order and rationality–are
marked by making narrative strategies and techniques manifest.
Therefore, the traditional ideological dichotomy of the historical
(the real by implication) and the fictive (the literary, the aesthetic) which
implies a binary opposition through which the reader is called upon to
regard the literary as unreal, provisional, anti-representational and thus
inferior and its opposite, that is, the historical as real, objective, universal,
natural, representational and thus superior is highly questioned. Accordingly,
in both (history and literature) meaning is an artistic and artificial construct.
On the other hand, metafictionists’ interest in historiography is also a
reaction against modernism’s autonomy (Hutcheon 1988, 88). Modernism

denies “the validity of the past” (Hutcheon 1988, 30), an idea highly
underpinned by the avant-garde which attempts to efface the past.
Postmodernism’s response to the principle is a dialogue with the past.
According Evo, the past “must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently”
(1995, 173). This is an ironic critical return to history. In truth, these
metafictional novels are reconstructing the past with a critical eye.
Whereas modernism is nostalgic, a perspective shared by some
postmodernists such as Jameson in Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism (1991) and Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981),
historiographic metafiction is a constant everlasting critique, not a nostalgic
return. The mode of historiographic metafiction “is always a critical
reworking not nostalgic as in modernism” (Hutcheon 1988, 4, 195). In
modernism we have a nostalgic return craving for the loss of (universal)
meaning, centre, coherence and unity, whereas postmodernism is constantly
critical of the past. The modernist credo reverberates in William Butler
Yeats’s words: “the centre cannot hold” (1987, 2308) which presupposes
the existence of a centre that used to hold. The postmodern credo, however,
is clear in Derrida’s words: “I didn’t say there was no center, that we could
get along without the center. I said that the center is a function, not a being–
a reality, but a function” (quoted in Marshall 1992, 89). Therefore,
postmodernism does not lament the loss of centre or meaning. It confirms
the centres but challenges them to make their ideological implications bold
suggesting in this way they are not natural but human constructs.
Liberal humanism’s universal notions including unity and
coherence, as prescribed by realism in a way and in modernism in another,
have an ideological basis. They are the terms under the rubric of which it
becomes legitimate to suppress other voices that stand in opposition to the
dominant discourse which tries to resolve the contradictions and bring about
mass consensus. Although fragmentary, modernism seeks to unify its
seemingly irrelevant fragmented parts. In contrast, in metafiction,
modernism’s conviction of unity irrespective of the work’s disintegration is
challenged by violating the work’s supposed unity through leaving
contradictions unresolved. Furthermore, realism’s seemingly resolved
paradoxes enhance liberal humanist notions of reality, neutrality and
naturalness. On the other hand, metafiction demonstrates and celebrates the
32 Chapter Two
problematisation of such contradictions (Waugh 1986, 6). It is fraught with

contradictions. It is a site where aesthetic forms and historical grounds are
conflated to remain unresolved. This type of fiction “keeps distinct its
formal auto-representation and its historical context and in so doing
problematizes the very possibility of historical knowledge, because there is
no reconciliation, no dialectic here–just unresolved contradiction . . .”
(Hutcheon 1988, 106). The biggest postmodernist contradiction is that the
self-reflexive (the aesthetic) and the historical (the real) are interwoven to
offer any representation as a construct, fabrication or artefact. As Waugh
puts it, “[n]on-fiction novels suggest that facts are ultimately fictions and
metafictional novels suggest that fictions are facts. In both cases, history is
seen as a provisional construct” (1986, 105). Historiographic metafiction
provides the unresolved confrontation of self-reflexivity and the documentary
realism of historiography leading advertently to problematisation of
representation which produces the illusion of coherence, universality,
centre, objectivity, naturalness and neutrality.
Amongst liberal humanist notions aiming at unity, coherence and
reality is the idea of a beginning, a middle and an end (similar to Aristotle’s
unity of plot) in the narrative to foster the illusion that it is portraying things
as they are (“slice of life”) in a linear chronological order for the reader.
Realism purports to assume the status of a camera objectively portraying
life. White’s differentiation between chronicle and story is akin to the one
between event and fact by postmodernists. The historian’s arrangement of
events in the chronological order with a beginning, middle and end leads
into the production of different “functions” (White 1975, 7), that is, different
facts or meanings. As a result, “[o]ne man’s ‘reality’ was another man’s
‘utopia’” (White 1975, 46) in a given history. On the other hand, modernism
has taken leave of the structure in that it offers an ambiguous open ending.
Whilst modernism does violate realist chronology by, for instance,
expressionistic fragmentary narrative, metafiction does not totally abandon
the historical. By contrast, in metafiction notions of beginning, middle and
end are all shown to have been artistically and artificially self-reflexively
contrived by the narrator; that is, they are the narrator’s matter of choice and
configuration. It presents multiple but not open and ambiguous endings. In
other words, modernism is for the “either/or” pattern, whereas metafiction
is for “both/and” (Hutcheon 1988, 49). All these narrative techniques are
used in order to be subverted as a critical commentary upon the objectivity

and impersonality of any realistic representation. Consequently, it points to
the artificiality of all representations. Instead of the seemingly monolithic
closure provided in literary realism and historiography and modernism’s
ambiguity, metafiction offers multiple equally possible endings. Recalling
Mikhail Bakhtin, it can be read as heteroglossic; that is, it aims at plurality
of discourse to include the suppressed little narratives to problematise the
purportedly unified discourse of realism.
In addition, realism’s convention of the omniscient point of view
implying a guarantor of ultimate meaning, as a liberal humanist notion, is
both exploited and subverted, for it implies a God-like author. The conflict
of languages and voices is apparently resolved in realist fiction through their
subordination to the dominant voice of the omniscient author. However,
since the guarantor of meaning has been questioned, for instance in
Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations, a coherent omnipotent power who
has a control over the meaning of the text gives its way to a fragmented,
disrupted narrative. In metafiction, different narrative voices which are at
odds with each other may be used, as in Chatterton in which the real Thomas
Chatterton gives a biographical account of his life. Realism, often regarded
as the classic fictional mode, paradoxically functions by suppressing this
dialogue.
As a brief recapitulation, the way we represent an event determines
the meaning of that event. In other words, “our common-sense presuppositions
about the ‘real’ depend upon how that ‘real’ is described, how it is put into
discourse and interpreted” (Hutcheon 2000, 31). Therefore, we may come
to know the real only through representations. In addition, since these
representations are human constructs and consequently ideologically
grounded, re-working and re-reading them, that is re-presenting them, helps
us recognise ideologies and strategies employed to achieve that purpose.
How historical documents of real events are put together decides the reality–
the meaning–of that especial narrative representation that we call history.
As discussed in the previous section, this shows that history is a process, not
a product. Moreover, history like literary realism is fictive since it assumes
the same strategies of narration and characterisation, as a novel does, that
are laid bare in metafiction. What postmodernism tries to divulge to the
reader is that our understanding of the present is only possible through
34 Chapter Two
representations. As Hutcheon observes, “postmodernism reveals a desire to

understand the present culture as the product of previous representations”
(2000, 55). It also makes the ideological grounds of these representations
manifest by way of commenting upon the ways and strategies through
which different representations and meanings claimed to be universal are
constructed. History, as well as literary realism, is not a window directly
open to real life and to the past but a process through which actual past and
real events are turned into facts and reality. Accordingly, any attempt to
achieve a monolithic understanding of the past, as metafictionists reveal, is
a failure. In short, the answer to the question of how we can come to know
the past is through representation and narration. As Hutcheon states,
“[k]nowing the past becomes a question of representing, that is, of
constructing and interpreting, not of objective recording” (2000, 70).
Moreover, in historiographic metafiction where the historical and the
literary are conflated, the historical gives credence to the literary, whilst the
literary undermines its referentiality leading to the problematisation of the
representation of reality.
Therefore, the conflation of the historical and the literary–the
arrangement of materials–results in the problematisation of representation.
In the next section, I delineate narrative strategies or techniques which lead
to such problematisation.
The Problematisation of the Representation of Reality

through Narrative Techniques and Strategies
“And what better weapon to use against a forger than another
forgery?” (Ackroyd 1993, 139)
Of central significance and interest, yet often overlooked by critics, is

metafictionists’ concern and obsession with narrative strategies and
techniques that imply literariness. Availing themselves of the contribution
that Formalists, especially Viktor Shklovsky, made to literary criticism and
practice, metafictionists have practiced and focused upon narrative
techniques in providing problematisation to the extent that they have taken
the concern as their theme, if any. Their self-reflexively manifesting the
process of construction in their works does indicate the degree of this
obsession. Russian Formalists view art as autonomous with the aim to
distinguish the literary from the non-literary and the form from the content
with the prior parts of these binary oppositions as the privileged and valued.
Nonetheless, metafictionists cast doubt upon such distinctions so far as to
assert that one may find as much literariness and fictionality in a literary
work as one may in an historical non-literary work, for instance.
Metafictionists, in the vein of Russian Formalists, lay bare the (literary)
devices as “the most essentially literary thing a novel can do” (Selden 1989,
12) in their narratives to problematise the representation of reality.
Metafictionists’ narrative strategies and techniques remind the
reader of Shklovsky’s two key terms in the process of narration. He refers
to the “raw material” or the “story” as “fabula” to be shaped by the writer
into plot, called “suzet” (2004, 13). Likewise, metafictionists assume an
almost similar strategy of writing through their self-reflexively manifesting
narrative strategies and techniques yet with different purpose. As mentioned
earlier, although Russian Formalists are committed to keep such
dichotomies, metafictionists and deconstructists blur any boundary to assert
difference and multiple interpretations in their perspective and aim, each of
which being constantly at odds with each other, so as to problematise
literary, cultural and historical conventions. This is the paradox of
postmodernism: to use the previous conventions whilst simultaneously
subverting them. That is why metafiction, unlike esoteric elitism and
hermeticism of modernism, is popular and entertaining whilst still
remaining esoteric and elitist. This is best illustrated in the detective plot
structure of most metafictional novels including Chatterton analysed in this
study. Metafiction’s degrees of formalism and its concern with narrative
strategies take for instance the statement “godisnowhere” which may have
two absolutely opposite meanings: “god is now here” and “god is nowhere.”
Poststructuralists (deconstructists) would argue this paradoxical state is
language itself, concluding that language is inherently unreliable. In other
words, for structuralism and poststructuralism, meaning is placed in the
structure. Nonetheless, to ascribe such a double-voicing feature only to the
nature of language is to underestimate a major contributory factor: artistry
or literariness. In addition to the inherent unreliable nature of language, as
a metafictionist would hold, this double-voicing (similar to Shklovsky’s
fabula), which would have not otherwise been self-contradictory, is elicited
due to the juxtaposition of the letters (suzet) in this especial order. Indeed,
36 Chapter Two
it is not only the inherent unreliability of language that makes such double-
voicing paradoxical statements, but also, the juxtaposition of the materials
decided by the writer.
Thus, in this sense and as it implies, the term post-formalism is
suggested in this study, for metafictionists’ obsession and concern with
degrees of formalism as well as its postmodernist deconstructionist
perspective to create problematisation. Postmodernist metafiction’s craving
for degrees of literariness can possibly be interpreted as a reaction to
linguistic approaches such as structuralism and poststructuralism dominant
in the last few decades. As John Barth states, “I’m inclined to prefer the
kind of art that not many people can do: the kind that requires expertise and
artistry as well as bright aesthetic ideas and/or inspiration” (1995, 163).
Metafiction is concerned with the process of fiction-making. Moreover,
“making” implies artistry, expertise, techniques and in this case literariness.
Accordingly, the problematisation of the representation of reality is best
achieved through resorting to narrative techniques and strategies. Yet, the
attempt is homage to and a critique of modernist aestheticism, a use and
abuse of modernist conventions.
Indeed, for that reason, historiographic metafiction’s conflation of
the historical and the literary is an attempt to demonstrate even the most
seemingly objective realist works such as history does employ literary
narrative strategies to a certain degree to produce meaning. It also manifests
how meaning of an historical event is constructed. In a sense, Aristotle’s
notion of mythos, “the arrangement of incidents,” (13) seems to have been
enlivened in metafiction. Historiographic metafiction’s modernist self-
reflexivity together with the historical results in the problematisation of the
representation of reality which is only possible through exploitation of
narrative techniques and strategies. This is very crucial to the apprehension
of the significance of narrative techniques. As mentioned earlier, the past
does exist, but our understanding of it or our historical knowledge of it is
through narrating, selecting and arranging of events or, to use White’s
terminology, “emplotment” (1975, 7). He defines the term as “the way by
which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to
be a story of a particular kind” (1975, 7), that is, of certain meaning and
ideology. In other words, to White, the mode of explanation, bearing
resemblance to the mode of representation–the way it is narrated–
determines a single event to be a comedy or tragedy (1975, 27).

Accordingly, especial narrative strategies may lead to generating especial
meaning(s) taken to be real and natural. White acknowledges history as a
process “of selection and arrangement of data from the unprocessed
historical record” (1975, 5). Historiographic metafiction aims at highlighting
this function and the arbitrariness of the meaning of a text, be it literary or
historical, through self-reflexively manifesting narrative techniques and the
process of construction in general. Likewise, as Hutcheon emphasises once
more, “while events did occur in the real empirical past, we name and
constitute those events as historical facts by selection and narrative
positioning” (1988, 97 emphasis added). Consequently, manifesting
narrative strategies and techniques reveals the artificiality of meaning.
The blurring and conflation of the historical and the literary in
historiographic metafiction thus provides a useful foundation for analysing,
re-considering and re-reading the conventions of the past. It gives the
opportunity for “rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the
past” (Hutcheon 1993, 246). Re-working the forms, which is ironic and
parodic, is an indication of historiographic metafiction’s aesthetic and
artistic status which implies autonomy, whereas its content, mostly dealing
with history, signals its possible referentiality, hence, problematisation of
representation:
Postmodernism both asserts and then undercuts this view, in its

characteristic attempt to retain aesthetic autonomy while still
returning the text to the “world.” But, it is not a return to the
world of “ordinary reality,” as some have argued (Kern 1978,
216); the “world” in which these texts situate themselves is the
world of discourse, the “world” of texts and intertexts. This
“world” has direct links to the world of empirical reality, but it
is not itself that empirical reality. . . . What historiographic
metafiction challenges is both any naïve realist concept of
representation but also any equally naïve textualist or formalist
assertions of the total separation of art from the world.
(Hutcheon 1988, 125)
Therefore, the conflation of the literary and the historical enshrines and
includes both the world and the art through artistic exploitation of narrative
techniques and strategies in re-working historical events and incidents. The
38 Chapter Two
historical gives credence to the literary and testifies its reality and
referentiality, whilst the literary contests any possibility of representationality
by introducing fictive characters and incidents besides the real historical
characters and events, in so doing drawing the attention to the meaning-
making process of historiography. That is, historical characters and events
make the fictive real and historical, whereas imaginary characters and
incidents render the historical fictive; hence, each challenges the validity of
the other. In so doing, “[h]istory ceases to be a great, universal story of
human progress and becomes a field of conflict where different interests and
narratives interweave with and question each other” (Malpas 2005, 99). As
a result, since fiction and historiography merge, they come to share similar
characteristics; therefore, unlike Aristotle’s claim, literature’s universality
is problematised. Instead, it offers heteroglossia and multiple histories all of
which, to borrow from Barthes, “blend and clash” (2000, 149). In what
follows, salient narrative strategies and techniques which make the re-
working of the conventions of the past possible and lead to the
problematisation of the representation of reality are expounded.
Parody merits especial treatment in this study and Chatterton.
Firstly, it is one of the most effective and dominant techniques or genres (in
metafiction) in playing artistic conventions off against each other resulting
in the problematisation of the representation of reality. Secondly, most
narrative techniques and strategies in Chatterton as well as many other
metafictional novels can be delineated in the light of parody, since they are
parodic and ironic in function, which serve the purpose of challenging the
representation of reality. Moreover, parody is a key element in re-working
and re-writing history and in juxtaposing the historical with the literary with
its critical purpose, hence, problematisation. For that reason, this study
focuses upon parody’s characteristics in contesting representation of reality.
Furthermore, two-voicing or to use Charles Jenck’s coinage
“double-voicing” (quoted in Dentith 2000, 165), parody makes conventions
bold through imitation with critical distance and in so doing problematises
the apparently real and natural status of facts. Both history and literature
employ a set of narrative conventions. Moreover, since parody is one of the
best ways to confront the past with the present (Hutcheon 1995, 86), it
exposes the conventionality of both literature and history writing as human
constructs. It suggests the past does not expire but that it is always open to
interpretation. Parody makes the past “a ‘living present’” (Hutcheon 1985,

42) by drawing attention to the process of creation. Nonetheless, it is not “a
nostalgic ‘return’,” as in modernism (Hutcheon 1988, 4), but instead an
ironic critical one. As sophisticated as the term is–since it requires the
reader’s knowledge of recognising “literary codes” (Hutcheon 1980, 25)–
parody self-consciously and self-reflexively alludes to the historical past to
indicate the impossibility of objectively imitating the past. For, any
imitation necessitates deviation, therefore, similarity together with
difference. This suggests that historiography, as a form of imitation,
necessitates distortion; consequently, history’s as well as literature’s
referentiality are problematised.
The gamut of parody may range from a single technique or strategy
or a precursor text, to a whole aesthetic, discourse or a whole set of
conventions in order to manifest ideologies hiding behind it. It does so by
revealing literary and cultural conventions. In historiographic metafiction,
the problematisation of representation is made possible through parodic re-
writing and re-working of conventions of historiography and those of
modernism. Accordingly, liberal humanism’ assumptions of origin and
universality as well as modernism’s aesthetic autonomy are contested, for
parody re-works through similarity with critical distance. Therefore, it
draws upon the very conventions that it tries to contest. It exposes the values
of the parodied discourse or text which Genette calls “hypotext” (quoted in
Dentith 2000, 12) by using and abusing the conventions of the discourse.
Subsequently, since history uses realist conventions, different realist
strategies of literary realism and historiography are parodied including the
use of omniscient point of view, autobiography, extracts from magazines
and journals, paratexts such as epilogues and prologues and intertexts. It
parodically makes use of the conventions of historiography and then places
them under erasure. Parodic re-writing the historical and the literary
simultaneously shatters any illusion of a monolithic universal meaning of
history by suggesting multiple possible versions of a single event through,
for instance, a variety of point viewpoints challenging history writing and
literary realism’s omniscient point of view.
On the other hand, modernist aesthetic autonomy is challenged, for
“[p]arody historicizes by placing art within the history of art” (Hutcheon
1985, 109). This principal element questions modernism’s, especially the
40 Chapter Two
avant-garde’s, conviction of innovation and creativity, whose aim is a total

break from the past, through using the previous techniques and strategies
which simultaneously offer both creativity along with imitation, that is,
similarity with critical distance. It, therefore, suggests both representationality
and anti-representationality and thus problematisation. As a form of self-
reflexivity (Hutcheon 1985, 28, 35, 49), parody creates and re-creates the
historical past to disclose any re-creation, such as historiography, entails
imitation alongside deviation and distortion. It can be suggested that parody
is the re-cycling of disposable materials. Whilst historicising and
consequently offering referentiality, parody demonstrates that meaning of
an historical event is contextualised through a set of narrative strategies and
juxtaposition of materials. Indeed, self-reflexivity undermines referentiality.
What we can learn from postmodernism is that “[p]arody . . . can historicize
as it contextualizes and recontextualizes” (Hutcheon 2000, 178).
Postmodernism’s concern with art is best revealed through parody. It marks
the self-representationality by re-working conventions of writing (Hutcheon
1985, 28, 35, 85). Therefore, parody reveals that our understanding of the
past is only recognised through re-creating the past. That is, history is
always a re-working–imitation together with difference–which naturally
draws upon narrative strategies and techniques. This self-reflexive
exposure, in turn, highlights the fact that the meaning of an event is a human
construct produced through these narrative strategies and techniques.
Parody, in its paradoxical confrontation of literary with the
historical, also makes use of paratextuality, that is, “footnotes, subtitles,
prefaces, epilogues, epigraphs, illustrations, photographs, and so on”
(Hutcheon 1986, 301). This critically problematises the status of history as
real by offering representationality whilst undermining it by the fictive.
Paratextuality might be the most important mode or element in placing the
historical into the fictive (Hutcheon 1986, 303). Furthermore, since a great
propensity has been directed towards reading literary texts for their
historical facts, its parodic re-working in historiographic metafiction,
accordingly, is both a reaction against such a tendency for a view holding
the fictionality of all history and the possible historical referentiality of
literature. For instance, the writer of Chatterton provides the reader with a
prologue which has a double-voicing function in that it gives real historical
information at the very beginning to be distorted later in the course of the
novel. This seemingly realistic document suggesting a high degree of reality

is challenged when different interpretations are made possible throughout
the novel. In effect, whilst different forms of paratextuality offer
representationality, they “are still created forms” (Hutcheon 1986, 302), that
is, made by us. The arrangement of historical documents, alongside the
fictive, both establishes the possibility of referring to the real world and
subverts its possible representationality. Both paratextuality and the fictive
“inscribe and undermine the authority and objectivity of historical sources
and explanations” (Hutcheon 1995, 90-1). In historiographic metafiction,
paratextuality re-enacts the past by referring to the seemingly original;
however, deviation from the original by the fictive, done by parody,
divulges any seemingly original historical document is an artistic creation
and that in historiography literary narrative techniques have always been
used to foster the illusion of historical originality. Further, since the
existence of the past is not rejected, literature seems to refer to reality. In
historiographic metafiction, paratexts work paradoxically in that they make
allusions to the outside world whilst paradoxically reminding the reader that
our knowledge of the world is only through “texts” (Hutcheon 1986, 310).
In effect, the borderline between the literary and the historical is blurred.
Consequently, in this chapter I expounded historiographic
metafiction in the light of postmodernist re-presentation. As revealed,
historiographic metafiction re-presents reality, that is, it discloses that
meaning, and reality, is a human construct created through the way the
narrator puts fictional elements together by using parody. In the next
chapter, drawing upon the theories discussed here, I examine Peter
Ackroyd’s Chatterton with regard to certain narrative techniques and
strategies such as parody.
CHAPTER THREE
HETEROCOSMIC WORLD
Introduction
“‘I will bring the Past to light again.’” (Ackroyd 1993, 51)
In this chapter, I analyse Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton in light of postmodern

theories discussed in the previous chapter. As a type of historiographic
metafiction, the novel investigates an historical event, the death of Thomas
Chatterton, providing different versions of reality to problematise the
representational and anti-representational views of art and literature through
narrative strategies and techniques. Also, I contend that as opposed to a
dominant view that postmodern texts are self-referential, the novel as a
paragon of historiographic metafiction consciously points out the paradoxes
of self-referentiality while it simultaneously creates a heterocosmic world,
that is, it refers to an external reality and to itself at the same time while
contesting both. Accordingly, in this chapter I explore the novel’s narrative
strategies and techniques that delineate the texts’ meaning-granting process
and create this heterocosmic world. Finally, I examine the novel’s self-
reflexivity in laying bare its own methods of writing and therefore
challenges the representation of reality. In other words, the style of the
writer reflects the subject matter and vice versa.
The novel investigates how meaning is constructed and how events
are granted meaning–how facts are fabricated. It also reveals the fictional
nature of reality as opposed to literary realism’s postulation of reality as
final. Accordingly, I show that Chatterton is a parody of an historical book
and historiography which sheds light upon the nature of facts and reality
and the ways we come to know the past. The novel illuminates how
narrative strategies and techniques in historiography and history-writing are
employed to create what we regard as incontrovertible facts. Indeed, it is an
Heterocosmic World 43
artistic demonstration of what happens when modernist autonomy coincides

with realist representationality.
In addition, parody plays a highly significant role in Chatterton.
Besides questioning the possibility of representation in art, it problematises
the notion of originality and autonomy of art deeply propagated in
modernism and specifically in the avant-garde. Chatterton parodically and
simultaneously draws upon and withdraws from previous conventions,
including those of modernism, to question the notions as defined by
modernists.
Chatterton as a Heterocosmic Text

The Problematisation of the Investigation for Historical
Truth: Bringing the Past to Life
“[T]he Living and the Dead were to be reunited.” (Ackroyd
1993, 52)
Peter Ackroyd is mostly critical of the instrumentality and representationality

of language in many of his works specifically in Chatterton. In this novel,
Ackroyd shares with poststructuralists the questioning of history as
monolithic. Chatterton disrupts the chronological order of narrating and
history-writing. Instead, it offers three different historical periods.
Chatterton expresses the view of fictionality of history and reality. In an
interview, Ackroyd claims that for him fiction and biography “are just
writing, as I have said before” (1996, 213). Of blurring the boundaries
between biography and fiction he adds that “I don’t think they are different
genres. So the hesitancy isn’t really there. Maybe they are for the reader,
but for me they are not” (1996, 213). This indicates Ackroyd’s questioning
view of the separation of a literary work from other works including history
which is best reflected in Chatterton. It also points out his absorption of
poststructuralists’ questioning the view of history as monolithic.
Another significant feature of Chatterton is blurring the boundary
between forgery and innovation. Most of his works including Chatterton
are fraught with lines and allusions to precursor writers. This can indicate
that he is a follower of the Tradition, to use Eliot’s term, that is, the
familiarity of a writer with the whole bulk of literary theory and writing as
well as the current modes of writing. This aspect makes his works
44 Chapter Three
sophisticated, for it requires a vast knowledge in the realm of literature and

theory on the part of the reader. Of his own style Ackroyd comments “[s]o
I presume my interest in lifting or adopting various styles, various traces,
various languages, is part of my imaginative trend, and I suppose the use of
historical fact as well as other people’s writings is just an aspect of this
magpie-like quality” (1996, 213). This “magpie-like quality” and imitation
of other styles are best expressed in Chatterton. Moreover, his works are
obsessed with a critical view of historical truth. To problematise the notion,
he blends the historical with the fictive. For him, truth is what we make up,
an idea also expressed in Chatterton. All of these aspects identify Ackroyd
and Chatterton known as an essential postmodernist writer and novel
respectively.
Generally, Chatterton is a parody of an historical text and
historiography in general. In other words, it is a return, not nostalgic but
critical, to the past, be it of an historical event or of literary texts. As a
parody Chatterton uses, abuses and lays bare the style and conventions of
historiography. It is a parody, for “the work of art is itself a reordering of
other works of art from the past. . . . Texts are rearrangements of other
texts” (Finney 1992, 250). Recalling White’s idea of “emplotment,”
Ackroyd’s rearrangement of the material is very crucial to the
problematisation of representation. Postmodernist metafiction is highly
aware of the referent. As the novel reveals, problems arise when the text
tries to make references to historical events or what we may know as the
external reality. The subject matter and narrative strategies and techniques
are employed to self-reflexively manifest the problematisation, which is of
representation and referentiality postulated as an axiom in historiography.
Representation first and foremost functions through similarity. Nonetheless,
in Hutcheon’s words, “[r]eference is not correspondence, after all” (1988,
144). On the other hand, whilst many, including modernists, reject the
possibility of reality, metafictionists, including Ackroyd, do confirm its
existence. They assert reality is a construct, that is, not given to us, not there.
Besides, whereas modernists’ return is nostalgic, mourning the loss of
something, that of metafictionists’ is critical, whether they are returning to
the past historical events or to other writers’ texts and themes. They aim at
neither rejection nor attestation but problematisation. “Historiographic
metafiction,” as Hutcheon contends, “renders problematic both the denial
and the assertion of reference” (1988, 145). Consequently, this section

endeavors to manifest the ways Chatterton explores history to put the idea
of representation and referentiality in a crisis. In addition, it demonstrates
and takes into account how the structure of the novel as well as its subject
matter reflects each other in problematising the representation of reality.
As the name of the novel Chatterton suggests, it is an historical
investigation and interrogation of real Thomas Chatterton, an eighteenth-
century poet and writer. At first glance, this suggests the whole novel as a
book of history or an historical novel. It is set in three different historical
eras: the twentieth century with Charles’s haphazard encounter with a
painting said to have been representing Thomas Chatterton; the nineteenth
century in which a painter, Wallis, is using a poet called George Meredith
as a model to paint the portrait of the last moment of Thomas Chatterton’s
suicide; finally, the eighteenth century and the last moment of Thomas
Chatterton’s life. Ackroyd establishes the theme of historical exploration by
Charles’s investigation of the portrait which the seller attributes to
Chatterton’s suicide scene. Inspired by the curiosity over the portrait,
Charles sets out to see the real owner from whom he receives a set of
documents and a manuscript with the initials “T. C” and a confession of
Chatterton having faked his own death continuing to write under famous
names including William Bake. Towards the end of the novel, the
manuscripts and the confession turn out to be fakes. Resorting to an
historical event which is generally regarded as a suicide, Ackroyd confirms
the reader’s previous expectation and interpretation of the event, that is,
Chatterton’s committing suicide. He, as well as Charles, imitates the act of
historiography in using the available documents and interpreting them to
arrive at a final truth. Being “engaged in an act of research,” (Ackroyd 1993,
9) Charles, in the vein of a historiographer, starts writing about Thomas
Chatterton based upon the findings. He investigates this through
“Chatterton’s books” (1993, 14). Here Ackroyd uses historical evidence to
plant the seeds of incredulity in the reader by suggesting that “Chatterton
didn’t die” but continued to write “fake” medieval poems (1993, 14).
Nonetheless, taking distance from mere copying and arriving at a
conclusion, Ackroyd jeopardises the situation by revealing the manuscripts
as fabrications to reveal how a historiographer makes truth or reality. Their
referentiality to the external reality is highly questioned. Throughout the
46 Chapter Three
novel, references are made to the external reality ranging from Chatterton’s
life, the place where he lived, detailed information of his surroundings and
activities during his lifetime, his faking the Rowley poems, his status as a
man of genius highly esteemed by Romantic poets and the list could go on.
Nonetheless, the novel suggests that such referentiality remains
problematic so far as it is challenged and questioned, not in a sense that the
reality did not exist but that it is a construct, granted a meaning. It is
questioned and challenged in different ways, from the events and incidents
in the story to the juxtaposition of the real with the fictive to the symbolic
use of the setting. After referentiality and references to the real world are
established, the novel questions their possibility by self-reflexive comments,
however esoteric, given by the characters. For instance, Harriet, asking
Charles for help, says, “I can’t put them together. I have all the names and
dates. I have my notes and my diaries. But I can’t . . . ‘Interpret them’”
(1993, 25). This is exactly the situation we have in the novel: we cannot
arrive at a final interpretation.
The idea of history-writing and imitation-with-distortion of history
is extended and emphasised throughout the narrative at the level of both
structure and subject matter. Chatterton in the autobiography given in the
narrative says,
I read heraldry, English antiquities, metaphysical disquisitions,

mathematicall researches, music, astronomy, physic and the
like. But nothing enthralled me so much as Historicall works,
and indeed I could not learn so much at Colston’s as I could at
home. (Ackroyd 1993, 51)
This passage reveals Chatterton is a good reader of the past as well as a good
forger. Charles is also depicted as a good forger. Meredith fakes the portrait
of Chatterton. This self-reflexively suggests that the novel is a parody of the
historical novel, imitating it in terms of subject matter and form whilst
taking distance from it. In effect, by taking the idea of the possibility of
representation as its theme, the novel plays the subject matter and the form
off against each other.
After establishing a generally known and accepted (totalised)
version of Chatterton’s life, Ackroyd, as a narrative strategy, has extended
and sustained the idea of historical investigation and exploration throughout
the narrative. Moreover, the subject matter contributes to the idea of

historical investigation by explicitly exploring the story of an historical
figure, Thomas Chatterton, indicated in the title. Biographical account of
Chatterton at the beginning of the novel as the prologue before starting the
story is Ackroyd’s attempt in using historical documents as the background
of the novel. This use of paratextuality both establishes and draws upon
historiographic conventions. When combined with a fictive story of
Chatterton fabricated by the writer, it, nevertheless, shatters the established
illusion. As the narrator says, “Harriet knew that Sarah had been engaged
on this project, a study of the images of death in English painting and
provisionally entitled The Art of Death, for the last six years and still seemed
to be no nearer completing it” (Ackroyd 1993, 20). This study, however,
remains incomplete. This is the study of the dead, that is, the past reflected
in a work of art, be it literary or historical. Furthermore, this “past” is called
upon through the use of the paratext. The text asserts both the possibility of
representation by directly alluding to the real information of Chatterton’s
life and auto-referentiality, for “we only know that external reference
through other texts” (Hutcheon 1986, 310), hence, auto-referential.
Moreover, such interrogation of the past is also shown in Philip’s
attempt to circumstantiate the portrait and the documents’ authenticity and
originality by leafing through historical and biographical books to learn
more about Chatterton. Ackroyd has accordingly extended the motif of
historical investigation to explore issues that are of high significance in all
areas including that of historical objectivity, authenticity and coherence and
to suggest the past is still a living force always open to new readings and
interpretations. As Chatterton says in his seemingly autobiography, “‘I will
perform a Miracle. . . . I will bring the Past to light again’” (Ackroyd 1993,
51). This is a self-reflexive comment upon the way historiographers, as well
as Ackroyd in this novel, do. It reflects what Hutcheon says of this mode of
fiction, “a dialogue with the past in the light of the present” (1988 19). The
sentence is, indeed, a laying bare of the device. This also manifests in and
supported by Stewart Merk’s analysing the portrait to authenticate it. The
same idea is expressed by Meredith who addresses Wallis “‘[y]ou are a
Resurrectionist, Henry. You can bring the dead to life, I see’” (Ackroyd
1993, 97). This suggests all novelists (especially metafictionists) and artists
in general as well as historiographers are resurrectionists, for they bring the
48 Chapter Three
past to the present giving it a living presence and force. This implies that
reading is dynamic and active, not static and passive as in literary realism.
Moreover, it is what a postmodernist parodist does. Ackroyd cunningly and
deliberately has extended the idea by now and again referring to Eliot’s The
Waste Land such as “she says, bury yourself in the garden and don’t bother
to come up in the spring” (Ackroyd 1993, 94) and “April with his showers
sweet” (1993, 94). This too reveals postmodernist art’s constant dialogue
with the past. This return, unlike that of modernists, is problematising. It
also questions the avant-garde’s radical breaking away from the past. It,
consequently, challenges the avant-garde’s anti-representationality.
The idea of re-writing and returning to the past is also evident when
Philip enters to find books for more information about Chatterton. He
undertakes to recover the past, “since he suspected that in old books some
forgotten truth might be recovered . . .” (Ackroyd 1993, 42 emphasis added).
However, history is irrecoverable. He “knew that his real comfort was to be
found in books” (Ackroyd 1993, 42). Nevertheless, nobody can find their
comfort–arriving at a final coherent meaning–in historical books, since they
are confusing. They put the reader in more dazzlement concerning the truth.
Additionally, as a literary narrative technique Ackroyd continues
to extend the idea by making allusions to Eliot’s The Waste Land as
discussed earlier for the theme of rebirth of the dead. Therefore, the idea of
the text as an historical book is established and sustained both at the level
of subject matter and structure to be destabilised. This reveals the writer’s
similarity to historiographers, for both make use of paratextual convention,
refer to historical documents, re-arrange them and put them into writing,
that is, narrative. Ackroyd must have referred to the historical information
about Chatterton to establish the first version of reality about his life in the
prologue: Chatterton committed suicide. This is the historical information
agreed upon and accepted as an axiom throughout history. However, as a
parody of historiography in general, the novel parodically both imitates and
takes distance from such conventions to shed light upon the idea that history
is fictional. As Hutcheon puts it, historiographic metafictionists employ
“paratextual conventions” to take vengeance “for the historian’s tendency
to read literature as only historical documents” (1986, 303). Therefore, the
narrative’s taking distance from an historical text is evident in its violation
of the historical information offered in the prologue.
What Ackroyd, as well as other historiographic metafictionists,

aims at is to explicate to the reader the ways–the narrative strategies and
techniques–through which we construct history and in so doing, thus, the
reader’s hope of arriving at a determinate meaning and ending remains
unfulfilled. Above and beyond, historiographers use different documents
and by intermingling them give the whole narrative especial meaning and
accordingly make another version of history as practiced by Charles:
The sad pilgrimage of his life . . .” Charles stopped, uncertain

how to continue with the preface. He could not now remember
whether all this information came from the documents
themselves, or from the biographies which Philip had lent him.
[. . .] He felt that he knew the biographers well, but that he still
understood very little about Chatterton. At first Charles had
been annoyed by these discrepancies but then he was exhilarated
by them: for it meant that anything became possible. If there
were no truths, everything was true. (Ackroyd, 79 emphasis
added)
As shown here, the past cannot be recovered, only constructed. Ackroyd is

unearthing how self-contradictory and multiple history-writing is. Charles’s
note is also a self-reflexive comment upon the method and strategy
employed in the novel which is self-contradictory and uncertain. His
exhilaration caused by the discrepancies and contradictions are close to
metafictionists’ same concern. Unlike historiographers and realists, they,
including Ackroyd, take pleasure in such contradictions and uncertainties.
This is a wonderful example of a theory-in-practice novel as mentioned
earlier. It is postmodern theories in artistic practice at the level of both
structure and subject matter. Charles confusion continues: “Charles went
back to his preface but, when he read ‘The sad pilgrimage of his life’, he
stared at the words with incomprehension. Where had they come from?”
(Ackroyd 1993, 79). “Incomprehension,” for he is not sure of his own
writing. On the other hand, he is attaching a special meaning to Chatterton’s
life: “sad.” However, was it really sad? If so, can it still remain objective?
Charles is uncertain and puzzled. Indeed, what Charles does here is a critical
imitation of what historiographers do. He is bringing the past to life.
However, as this section implies, studying the past from the present
50 Chapter Three
problematises the authenticity of history and historical representation, for

no objective, certain and single version of history could be accessible.
Therefore, the narrative is aimed at demystifying the idea of a
unified, coherent and objective history as opposed to the mimetic view. As
Philip observes:
[I]t was best to let the manuscripts be, to leave them as they were
at the time of Charles’s death and make no further effort to prove
or to disprove their authenticity. Had he not always said to Philip
that there is a charm and even a beauty in unfinished work–the
face which is broken by the sculptor and then abandoned, the
poem which is interrupted and never ended? Why should
historical research not also remain incomplete, existing as a
possibility and not fading into knowledge? (Ackroyd 1993, 134)
Proving and disproving an historical fact requires our certainty of it. It also
entails exclusion which is highly questioned in postmodernism. Philip’s
point is that any claim concerning the authenticity and inauthenticity of
history–representationality and anti-representationality–in the sense that
one ultimate meaning is possible is a fallacy. Instead, the novel makes
attempts to problematise, re-presents but not represent. In addition, Philip’s
point is why you want to superimpose meaning upon any event. This is a
self-reflexive comment upon both historiography and literature in the sense
that any attempt in arriving at a final meaning in a narrative is ideological
and fallacious. It exposes Ackroyd’s own strategy in the novel. That is, the
novel is interspersed with different narratives, voices and meanings so that
it remains unfinished. This is not a characteristic peculiar to metafiction.
However, it is laid bare in it. Moreover, Philip realises that, as the narrator
says, “[i]f you trace anything backwards, trying to figure out cause and
effect, or motive, or meaning, there is no real origin for anything.
Everything just exists. Everything just exists in order to exist” (Ackroyd
1993, 146). In view of that, an historical event exists as just an event, not a
reality or fact; we give it meaning. As is implied by Philip, history is a
human construct, consequently, a creation, an artefact. Creation demands
subjectivity. The two notions have often been overlooked in historiography
in large part. They question liberal humanism’s objectivity. Furthermore,
metafictionists assert that history is not a coherent, monolithic, cause-and-
effect chronology. Consequently, any attempt to postulate history as a
coherent unified entity is tantamount to superimposing especial meaning

upon it. It is also an ideological act. As Andrew Flint has already
apprehended, “[t]he years are incorrigible, aren’t they? They never cease”
(Ackroyd 1993, 46). Therefore, as the self-reflexive comment has it, history
cannot be recovered objectively, for it is not a fixed monolithic narrative but
is constantly present and our understanding of it is always conditioned. It
can only be created. Historical representation accordingly requires creation
and interpretation, not an objective recounting.
The idea of historical investigation and bringing the past to life is
also extended by symbolism. Ackroyd seems to be singular in being very
comprehensive and selective in that he conveys the problematisation of
representation and draws the reader’s attention to the idea by differently
laying bare his own devices at the level of structure as well as subject matter.
Amongst his strategies is the symbolic use of the setting to raise more self-
reflexivity to be recognised only by the sophisticated reader. Bearing in
mind that understanding metafiction requires a good grasp of knowledge in
the realm of literary theory, this in turn suggests the esoteric aspect of
metafiction. As a case in point, entering the Dodd’s Gardens, Charles
beholds “the pilasters copied from eighteenth century facades and
reproduced in miniature; the small iron balconies, some of them newly
painted and others stippled with rust . . .” (Ackroyd 1993, 4 emphasis
added). Analogous to the autobiography section, this is a self-reflexive
comment and theoretical issue expressed in an artistic way, by contrast
symbolically. Ackroyd seems to have repurposed postmodern theories into
artistic practice as is metafictionists’ wont. That is, he is deeply concerned
with postmodern theories. The setting, the description of the architecture
can symbolically stand for the juxtaposition of the historical with the fictive
as in parody in which the ideas of both copy and innovation simultaneously
exist. The new and the old are juxtaposed as in postmodernist architectures:
“the pediments so broken or decayed that they were scarcely recognisable
above the doors and windows” (Ackroyd 1993, 4 emphasis added). Just as
the architecture suggests they are similar to the original, however dissimilar
in that they have missed some parts as in parody, as in this novel. His use
of architecture may deliberately be due to the fact that it was first in
architecture where postmodernist hybridity took artistic shape and to which
the term “postmodern” was first applied (Hutcheon 1988, xi). This once
52 Chapter Three
more shows Ackroyd’s grasp of theoretical knowledge that the text expects
of the reader. The past did exist, as the novel suggests, yet our recognition
and knowledge of it is problematic. The narrative goes on to say “the
curiously moulded fanlights discoloured with age, so that no light could
now pass through them; the elaborate stucco work, none of it now without
blemish or injury; the wood rotten, and the stone fractured or defaced”
(Ackroyd 1993, 4 emphasis added). Nothing has remained untouched.
Everything has been removed from its “original” status, if any at all.
Furthermore, this association of light with knowledge and understanding is
put into question. As it symbolically suggests, we are not able to have full
knowledge of the past as time passes, for our accessibility to it is only
through narrations which are, akin to the novel, constructed through
different techniques, therefore, the problematisation of the representation of
reality. The past can be re-written but in a twisted, deformed, disfigured
way.
In addition, in Chapter Two we have the juxtaposition of three
different levels of time in the description of Harriet’s house which is of great
significance: “. . . the Sony television set, the copy of Johnson’s Dictionary
which was used as a base for the death mask of John Keats reproduced in a
limited edition” (Ackroyd 1993, 15). The television set belongs to the
present time. Johnson belongs to the eighteenth century. Keats belongs to
the beginning of the nineteenth century. All are juxtaposed. This symbolises
the juxtaposition of the three different levels of time we have in the novel.
This is also another self-reflexive–however esoteric–indication of mingling
the real with the fictive in that references to the real world and history are
intermingled with fictive characters such as Harriet. Thus, the style reflects
the subject matter. Therefore, as previously mentioned, Ackroyd makes use
of symbols as a strategy to underpin the problematisation of representation
and referentiality expressed throughout the novel. Similarly, exposing his
method of writing Chatterton says, “[t]he very words had been called forth
from me, with as much Ease as if I were writing in the Language of my own
Age. Schoolboy tho’ I was, it was even at this time that I decided to shore
up these ancient Fragments with my own Genius: thus the Living and the
Dead were to be reunited. From that very moment, I ceased to be a meer
Boy” (Ackroyd 1993, 52 emphasis added). As one of the most illuminating
cases of parody and self-reflexivity through which the subject and the
structure echo each other to problematise the representation of reality, this

self-reflexively demystifies how writers imitate the language of the past so
that the reader might think it original. It is the language of Ackroyd,
parodying “the dead,” that is, Eliot which the reader might attribute to
Chatterton. This anachronistic use of a part of Eliot’s poem in Chatterton’s
writing creates self-reflexivity and undermines the authenticity of
Chatterton’s words. This is one of the most illuminating examples of parody
imparting the artistic ways through which a historiographer may create
history. Ackroyd both imitates Chatterton’s writing whilst taking distance
from it by deliberate use of anachronism as a technique. In so doing the past
and the present are reunited. Accordingly, the narrative imitates the past–
Eliot’s poem as a case in point–to use the very theme of rebirth expressed
in the poem, hence, representationality. However, it simultaneously takes
distance from it through anachronistic use of a part of Eliot’s poem in
Chatterton’s writing which creates self-reflexivity and undermines the
authenticity of Chatterton’s words and consequently represents auto-
representationality in the work of art. Nonetheless, the allusion made to The
Waste Land intensifies the theme of rebirth of the dead and return to the
past.
In addition to exposing the strategies employed in historiography,
Ackroyd is in this light manifesting his own strategy and style in the novel.
On the one hand, he is doing what Chatterton is preaching in that he is
parodying The Waste Land as a modern work of art intermingling it with
the style and vocabulary of Chatterton’s time. This is a copy of Chatterton’s
style of writing to make this part completely regarded as his autobiography
with critical distanciation which is brought about by alluding to the said
poem. Therefore, Ackroyd means what Chatterton says whilst criticising the
very thing. Thus, the living and the dead are re-united not to be passively
digested but to be criticised and challenged. In effect, Ackroyd is
concurrently using and abusing the past and the present. He does so by
revealing the style in which he writes. Chatterton’s autobiographical account
of his writing and style is a self-reflexive manifestation of Ackroyd’s, as
well as realists and historians’, style and strategies of writing. His allusion
to a line in The Waste Land is both imitating the very idea–that the past and
the present are re-united–and taking distance from it, for whereas Eliot’s is
nostalgic mourning for a loss, Ackroyd’s is problematising. As mentioned
54 Chapter Three
before, parody may aim at a whole discourse. In other words, Eliot’s poem,
or a part of it, may be used to criticise not the poem but a discourse–that of
realism and liberal humanism. To use Hutcheon’s words, “parody’s ‘target’
text is always another work of art or, more generally, another form of coded
discourse (1985, 16). Indeed, it may use hypotext (the parodied text) as a
target, as in the traditional application of parody, or as a weapon, as in the
modern use, to criticise not the parodied text but a whole convention or
discourse in the present situation. The allusion to Eliot’s poem questions by
suggesting that we know the past through the present and through our
representations of the past. Consequently, history is not a unified, universal,
coherent phenomenon as liberal humanists hold but is constructed through
our representations.
Furthermore, alluding to literature within an historical
autobiographical text undermines historiography’s truth claims. This
suggests the fictionality and literariness of historiography: we may find as
much literature and fictiveness and reality–allusion to the external reality–
in an historical text as we may in fictive texts such as Chatterton. Therefore,
it is a story of writing a story or history. This amount of self-reflexivity
suggests that the novel is fictive. For instance, the allusion to the poem also
makes the readers aware that what they are reading is written by Ackroyd,
not by the real Thomas Chatterton. This suggests that the work is anti-
representational, self-engaged and narcissistic to use Hutcheon’s terminology.
On the other hand, Chatterton’s real accounts and references to his life and
career as well as references to Eliot are possible historical references which
cannot be analysed without considering the historical context and characters
outside the present text. This, accordingly, proposes historiographic
metafiction’s representationality, hence, postmodernist re-presentation and
the problematisation of the representation of reality. It is neither a total break
from the past, nor a mere copy of it. It is both referential and anti-referential.
This is also a good example of blurring the boundary between the fictive
and the real both in the sense that Chatterton’s account is fictive written by
Ackroyd and that Chatterton’s real account is interpolated by a fictive part
from fiction, that is, The Waste Land. These are all achieved due to
Ackroyd’s style of parody. This self-reflexively lays bare Ackroyd’s method
and strategies of writing the novel. This self-reflectivity, accordingly,
problematises the novel’s possible referentiality. In the next section I
explore how historical representationality is problematised by placing

different versions of a single event under erasure.
History under Erasure

“My syllables, the remnants of antiquity.” (Ackroyd 1993, 136)
Chatterton places history under erasure by presenting three different

contradictory versions of a single event, Chatterton’s death, all of which
make references to the external reality (Chatterton’s real life and death) to
problematise the nature of historical originality and its possible
representationality. The first version, generally accepted and presented in
the prologue, predicates Chatterton committed suicide. Consequently, the
reader is invited to participate in the act of historical investigation. The
version is sustained and supported throughout the narrative until it is
questioned by other possible versions. As presented in the prologue and
reiterated at times throughout the narrative, his suicide is due to destitution
and despair. This is made plausible and credible, for other references to
Chatterton’s real life seem to be authentic including the information about
his love of antiquity, the place he lived and his love of music due to his
father’s profession. The version is supported by Meredith and Charles’s
despair and poor life. Meredith decides to commit suicide for the same
reason Chatterton did although the former does not go through it. Moreover,
Harriet and Chatterton’s allusion to William Wordsworth’s “Resolution and
Independence” intensifies the idea that he committed suicide due to
“despondency and madness” (Ackroyd 1993, 2, 21, 147) which are in turn
due to poverty. Consequently, the idea that Chatterton committed suicide is
extended and can be confirmed by the novel’s strategy of giving real
biographical information and its juxtaposition with the fictive, that is, the
imaginary stories constituting Meredith and Charles being in parallel with
that of Chatterton.
After the use of paratext has established such seemingly possible
referentiality, real historical information and allusion to Eliot’s poem, the
narrative puts it under question by offering a second possible version of
Chatterton’s death being in total contradiction with the first: Chatterton
faked his own death. In Chapter Six, Chatterton undertakes to give an
autobiographical account. In addition, to make it more plausible the
56 Chapter Three
narrator, Chatterton, seems to try to convince the reader to accept the

information as real, for as he says, “who was present at my Birth but my
own self” (Ackroyd 1993, 50). This version challenges the idea of poverty
and despair and consequently suicide. Chatterton says, “[t]hey also called
me Tom-all-Alone because of my solitariness: but I was not alone, since I
had as many Companions as I required in my Books” (50-1). This implies a
rejection of depression due to solitariness. It questions the idea of his
hopelessness and despair given at the beginning. Being a good reader of the
past and having read Chaucer, Camden, Percy and Cooper (51), Chatterton
was very enthusiastically involved in the act of reading to the extent that he
was not distracted. This intensifies the idea that he did not commit suicide
but managed to write under pseudo-names. Chatterton continues to present
the reasons and motivation behind what he did, that is, faking his death. As
we are told, he was not able to write in his own name. His artistic
productions “would have been despised and neglected” due to the people’s
low intellect at the time and his being “a boy of obscure Birth” (53), thus,
enough motivation for faking his own death.
Chatterton divulges to his reader the methods and strategies by
which he faked Rowley and continued to write under famous names. This
accordingly vindicates and gives credence to his fabricated death. First, we
are presented and made acquainted with the idea that Chatterton is a good
reader of the past and a lover of antiquity. In this section the idea
reverberates once more. As we are told in the prologue, “‘he fell in love,’
his mother said, both with antiquity and with the past of Bristol itself” (1).
This section, accordingly, imitates and draws upon Chatterton’s generally
known (totalised) biographical information presented in the prologue. He
would read scraps of parchment in the church where his father was a
chorister. This adapts to the biographical information provided in the
prologue concerning “certain scraps of manuscript,” his mother gave to
him, “which had been found in the muniment room of that church” (1). In
Chapter Six he says, “when I wrote out their words, copying the very
spelling of the Originals, it was as if I had become one of those Dead and
could speak with them also” (52). This reflects the prologue where we are
told that he created “an authentic medieval style from a unique conflation
of his reading and his own invention” (1). Therefore, the autobiography
does refer to the external reality: he is a forger, a reader of the past and a
lover of antiquity due to the situation in which he grew up. Moreover,

Chatterton’s words self-reflexively suggest the novel as a dialogue with the
past. This is a postmodernist idea and a comment upon Ackroyd’s style and
theme. Charles is also a lover of antiquity expressed in his love of the
portrait and investigation of the documents, the portrait and Chatterton
himself, just like Ackroyd is. Therefore, Ackroyd sustains the idea.
This section of the novel extends the idea of forgery as confessed
by Chatterton in the real biographical information to his own death because
of the reasons offered earlier. Just as he was a good forger, or a good imitator
in a sense, so he could fake his own death. The idea is also supported by
Joynson’s persuasion concerning Chatterton’s devising his death by
elaborating upon the ways through which he faked the ancient poetry.
Chatterton’s account of what he did gives feasibility and credibility to the
idea of faking his death, an idea occurring to Joynson: “what could be easier
than to prove he had faked everything else, including his own death?” (139).
Chatterton confesses and exposes that “[m]y first task was to give myself as
good a Lineage as any Gentleman in Bristol, and this I did by combining
my own knowledge of Heraldic devices with a document which, as I put it,
was ‘just newly found in St Mary Redcliffe and writ in the language of
auntient Dayes’” (52). He is very self-reflexively talking about his own
style. He continues to lay bare his style and strategies as is evident in the
words “[m]y method was as follows” (52). He explains how he uses books
and volumes and then adds his readings of antiquity to them:
If I took a passage from each, be it ever so short, I found that in

Unison they became quite a new Account and, as it were,
Chatterton’s Account. Then I introduc’d my own speculations
in physic, drama, and philosophy, all of them cunningly changed
by the ancient Hand and Spelling I had learn’d; but conceeved
by me with such Intensity that they became more real than the
Age in which I walked. I reproduc’d the Past and filled it with
such Details that it was as if I were observing it in front of me:
so the Language of ancient Dayes awoke the Reality itself for,
tho’ I knew that it was I who composed these Histories, I knew
also that they were true ones. (52 emphasis added)
Then, he explains more: “[a]nd these I related in their own Voices, naturally,
as if they were authentick Histories: so that tho’ I was young Thomas
58 Chapter Three
Chatterton to those I met, I was a very Proteus to those who read my Works”
(54). However, the conflation of the historical and the fictive, in the form of
an autobiography, calls into question the authenticity of historical accounts,
including this one and their referentiality. In Hutcheon’s terms, “[t]he
interaction of the historiographic and the metafictional foregrounds the
rejection of the claims of both ‘authentic’ representation and ‘inauthentic’
copy alike, and the very meaning of artistic originality is as forcefully
challenged as is the transparency of historical referentiality” (1995, 77),
hence, problematisation of representation. Moreover, this is a self-reflexive
manifestation of historians’ style of writing. It reveals how language and
narrative strategies can give meaning to a phenomenon.
Chatterton goes into every detail of his own method. Therefore, as
he says:
[T]o confound and to outwit them [readers], I learned how to

give my own Papers the semblance of Antiquity. Into my Closet
I smuggl’d a pounce bag of Charcole, a great stick of yellow
ochre and a bottle of black lead powder, with which Materials I
could fabricate an appearance of great Age as closely as if my
new invented Papers were the very ones from the Chests of St
Mary Redcliffe. I would rub the ochre and lead across the
Parchments and sometimes, to antiquate my Writings still
further, I would drag them through the Dust or hold them above
a Candle–which process not only quite chang’d the colour of the
Inke but blackened and contracted the Parchment itself.
(Ackroyd 1993, 52)
As explained, he did not merely copy the past but added his own material to
it. This is self-reflexively a manifestation of Ackroyd’s method and strategy
of writing as well as that of other metafictionists’ to a lesser or more degree.
The use of “Dayes” highly self-reflexively reveals how he uses old
language. Just as Chatterton is explaining his methods, so does Ackroyd.
Therefore, the reality and representationality that we may postulate for a
text is the result of strategies and techniques deliberately used by the writer
such as “auntient” words. Old spellings–“authentick” and “auntient,” to
name but two–and allusions to the bulk of literature including The Waste
Land enable Ackroyd to exhume the past. Chatterton’s confession echoes–
represents–Ackroyd’s own style and Ackroyd’s in turn re-presents
historiography. In other words, he problematises historiography’s

referentiality. He has brought the historical into the fictive. In the same vein,
the reader is apt to consider the part as the real account of Chatterton. Since
Chatterton was a forger of genius, the reader may easily accept his other
forgery supported by Joynson’s persuasion: suicide. Joynson tells him
“‘[t]he monk cannot last. You are riding him too hard’” (55). Chatterton
thinks that “[h]e was Correct: there was no point in further Masquerade and,
with Catastrophe threatening, I could no longer restrain myself. ‘But I must
write,’ I said, ‘I need to live. I cannot eat air or grass for my Sustenance’”
(55). Joynson suggests that Chatterton fake his own death. As mentioned
earlier, Chatterton’s motivation for faking his death is exactly due to the
same reasons offered earlier for his suicide: poverty. We can see how
cunningly and artistically Ackroyd makes two contradictory interpretations
and meanings out of a single event. Chatterton faked his own death in the
same way that he forged medieval poems to continue to write under pseudo-
names including Rowley, as presented in the documents and confession
attributed to him as well as in Chapter Six which is totally narrated by
Chatterton himself.
The idea–Chatterton faked his own death–is made feasible, for it
is extended throughout the novel: Charles is asked to fake Harriet, Wallis
fakes Chatterton, the portraits of the three nudes are fakes and the painting
Charles comes to possess turns out to be a fake too. In this sense, they all
echo and mirror each other. Ackroyd has employed the technique of mise
en abyme. Each story operates as a mise en abyme of the novel itself.
Ackroyd has written a section in the novel which is presented as
Chatterton’s autobiography but in reality has been written by Joynson. In
effect, the idea that the autobiography attributed to Chatterton is in fact
written by Joynson reflects Ackroyd’s own style. In other words, the whole
novel is Ackroyd’s artistic creation, not reality. On the one hand, the idea
that the confession is a fake is convincing due to its dominance, sustainment
and extension throughout the novel in different ways. On the other, the
narrative avoids from passively accepting it due to the text’s highly self-
reflexivity and laying bare the methods and strategies including the very
technique of mise en abyme. Here, the reader has totally, but confusedly,
accepted that Chatterton was a forger. Confusedly, since this is Ackroyd’s
account of him and is self-engaged. Hence, fictive whilst historical facts
60 Chapter Three
offering referentiality cannot easily be disregarded. The reader can go to

historical books for Chatterton’s life and history. It seems here that we have
the same historical account as stated in historical books. However, its
juxtaposition with fictive characters and parts gives the account a new
meaning. The same event now does not have the same meaning. Every
sophisticated reader knows that Chatterton’s real life is depicted in this
chapter. Nonetheless, Ackroyd’s strategies have given it new meanings but
self-consciously. It is first in the form of autobiography. Parodying
autobiography as a subdivision of historiography, this section highly
challenges and questions the credibility and authenticity we usually attribute
to historical documents including autobiography.
To convince the reader, Ackroyd’s strategy is to fill the story with
some historical validity whilst making it invalid by subverting it. How the
writer has managed to combine the fictive with some historical validity is
both illuminating and artistic. References to Chatterton’s life, the document
his mother had given to him and his knowledge of the ancient are all valid
and difficult to deny. Yet, they are manipulated in the narrative to give a
new meaning to Chatterton’s death: he faked his death. This possible
referentiality is problematised when the confession turns out to be a faked
narrative. The reader is called upon to acknowledge how artistically the
writer presents postmodern theories in practice at the level of subject matter
and structure. Therefore, not only the idea established at the beginning is
subverted at the level of structure by providing different narratives and
voices, but at the level of subject matter as reflected in Chatterton’s
confession and in Merk’s manifestation of the techniques employed in the
portrait. Self-contradictorily as it may seem, the manuscripts, although
faked by Joynson, undermine other versions of reality in the novel, for the
very act of forgery may be true for them too. Reasons and motivation
presented here accord with the ones of the external reality: he would have
been neglected due to the people’s indifference and lack of intellect for art.
Nonetheless, Ackroyd’s self-reflexive strategy of exposing the device as
reflected in Chatterton’s divulging his method of writing and forging casts
doubt upon the version presented here. Furthermore, the autobiography as
well as the documents turn out to be fakes. In effect, Ackroyd’s strategy is
to put the whole section under erasure.
However, the introduction of a third possible version of Chatterton’s

death adds to the confusion aroused so far. It turns out that the documents,
the portrait and Chatterton’s autobiography have been fabricated due to
personal interests. Therefore, as Charles says, although before the
revelation, “our whole understanding of eighteenth-century poetry will have
to be revised” (Ackroyd 1993, 79). This is a key concept not only throughout
the novel but also for almost all historiographic metafictionists, for as
Charles realises and writes “each biography described a quite different poet:
even the simplest observation by one was contradicted by another, so that
nothing seemed certain” (79). The novel is accordingly questioning the
totalised generally agreed idea of historiography that has insinuated itself
into our consciousness. In order to tarnish Chatterton’s name, Joynson
decides to fake the manuscript. This is redolent of the ideological ground of
all narratives and the idea that narratives–be they of historical or literary–
are human constructs. We have a return to the first version–that Chatterton
committed suicide–but this time with a distortion, for this new revelation
concerns Joynson’s personal motivation. He decides to take vengeance upon
Chatterton by forging the “memoirs” and faking “the work of a faker and so
confuse forever the memory of Chatterton” (139). As revealed here, the
postmodernist re-turn to the past is shown at the level of structure and plot
as well as subject matter in that many times the narrative re-turns and refers
to Chatterton’s death to provide it with a new meaning. Moreover, self-
reflexive comments in the narrative point out postmodernist re-turn to the
past. In a sense, this is what historiographers do and what Ackroyd has self-
reflexively and consciously done. This brings home to the reader the idea
that beneath any narrative lurks an ideology and that historians and
historiographers may give especial meaning to an event for the very reason:
personal interests and/or ideological reasons.
In addition, the presentation of three different levels of time
suggests the text as fiction. The historical accounts give the real impression
of reading history. It also suggests the idea of re-writing the past whose
objective possibility is problematised in the course of the novel not in the
sense that one cannot re-write history but in the sense that no single unified
account of the past can be recovered. For, writers may discriminately make
the story agree with their especial interests or ideologies. Harriet distorts
Wordsworth’s lines that “‘[c]ut is the bough . . . that might have grown full
62 Chapter Three
straight’” (2) to accord it with her personal interest and purpose. Ackroyd
has managed “to show from the start of his book that we all appropriate the
past for our own purposes and in our own ways” (Finney 1992, 250). He
has done so both at the level of structure through fabrication of different
narratives and their juxtaposition and at the level of subject matter by self-
reflexive discussions of art and literature in three different times. For that
reason, distortions and the way materials are arranged–emplotment–
contribute to the (ideological) purpose behind re-writing history. After
Charles’s death, Harriet takes the painting and the documents to a gallery
where it is dated back to 1830 due to a piece of furniture depicted in the
painting with the same date. Further, Philip finds out that the manuscripts
are also fakes. The owner says the story of Chatterton’s faked suicide was
fabricated by his ancestor, Samuel Joynson. Joynson’s son paints the
supposed portrait of Chatterton as a continuation of his father’s hoax. His
father did so (blackening Chatterton’s name) in revenge for slanders against
the publisher expressed in Chatterton’s last letter. Therefore, the subject
matter here, which is totally fabricated, supports and reflects the idea that
distortions and other versions of reality may be devised due to ideological
reasons and/or personal interests. The novel accordingly suggests the
possibility of ideological background of any historical as well as literary
text. In other words, it exposes the ideological nature of all representations.
Moreover, the idea of the documents and confession as fakes is
juxtaposed with the third version of Chatterton’s death: he unintentionally
killed himself by accidently taking too much medicine to treat his venereal
disease. It stands at odds with the generally known biography of Chatterton,
however, in a different way. His intention and motivation for living is
expressed in the letter to his mother: “I enjoy high spirits. I am elevated
beyond expression, and have lofty thoughts of my approaching eminence.
Soon you will see me on the pinnacle of glory, dear Mama, far removed
from the prostrate and debased Bristolians of our acquaintance” (Ackroyd
1993, 120). He continues, “[d]earest Mama, my rise through life proceeds
apace. I am exalted in London and will no doubt soon reach the pitch of
sublimity. Your loving son, Tom” (120-1). The italicised terms imply that
he is fraught with hope and incentive expecting a promising future. Italics
are in original which are seemingly put by Chatterton in the letter. However,
this is a strategy deliberately employed by Ackroyd to draw the reader’s
attention so that the other version concerning his committing suicide sounds
unconvincing and consequently incredible. By fabricating and presenting
Chatterton’s intention in the form of a letter to his mother, Ackroyd
establishes enough justification for the accidental death. In this part, if
regarded as complete, the writer manipulated and discovered evidence
mingling them with the imaginary which supports the idea that Chatterton
died accidentally: the fact that he was a writer of genius as acclaimed by
Romantic poets and was reaching his pinnacle of success–consequently,
motivated–is true historical information. At the beginning and in a similar
fashion, he uses another information and evidence that make his suicide
credible. In so doing, Ackroyd is self-reflexively commenting upon the
ways through which reality and meaning are constructed by a historiographer
as well as a narrator. As a result, the entire three versions, which are in total
contradiction with each other, are made plausible, supported and extended
for a while to be contradicted by the other. This self-reflexively and self-
consciously reveals how a single event may be narrated in a way, thanks to
the selection and arrangement of the material, to produce different
contradictory meanings. Therefore, meaning is constructed and produced in
the process of writing. As Hutcheon puts it, “[t]he real exists (and existed),
but our understanding of it is always conditioned by discourses, by our
different ways of talking about it” (1988, 157) each of which may emphasise
a specific ideological aspect of it.
In the final chapter, Ackroyd describes Chatterton according to his
real biography and history: “underneath he writes, in capital letters,
APOLLO REDIVIVUS. Then he tears it up and scatters the pieces on the
wooden floor” (1993, 141). This chapter is a re-writing of the last minutes
of Chatterton’s life. Once more, juxtaposition of the historical (the real) with
the fictive which is Chatterton’s accidental death problematises its
referentiality. Furthermore, even this part of the narrative is tinted with the
idea of Chatterton committing suicide. Chatterton comments upon the child
he sees: “[b]etter to give him arsenic . . . than to leave him undefended
against this harsh world” (132-3). For that reason, he seems to be obsessed
with suicide. As Mr. Crome conceives, he does not seem to be happy. This
can give credence to the idea that he committed suicide. In effect, Ackroyd
puts each narrative presented in the novel under erasure. We cannot naïvely
accept it; nor can we eliminate it from the narrative. It is part of the narrative.
64 Chapter Three
However, he withdraws from it. Although it might not be real in an historical

sense, it is real in that it contains a broad critical discussion of history-
writing and production of art.
The novel thus makes poses critical questions concerning the
objectivity, coherence and transparency to offer history as an artefact, a
creation, a discourse. This is made possible through incorporating the
conventions of historiography whilst taking distance from it. As Hutcheon
contends, “[h]istoriographic metafiction, while teasing us with the existence
of the past as real, also suggests that there is no direct access to that real
which would be unmediated by the structures of our various discourses
about it” (1988, 146). Consequently, the referential possibility of the
narrative is highly put under question through different techniques and
strategies at the level of form and subject matter including the presentation
of three contradictory versions of Chatterton’s death; juxtaposition of three
different levels of time, a mixture of the real (historical information, events
and characters) and the fictive; the symbolic use of the setting; self-
reflexivity which highly challenges referentiality, as expressed in the
comments and discussions bandied between and provided by the characters
and the narrators; the use of mise en abyme; the technique of under erasure
which is to the highest degree problematising and confusing; the
investigation of and re-writing, the real life and death of Thomas Chatterton
as the subject matter; the placement of theoretical discussions into artistic
practice; the confrontation of the present with the past in the form of a
dialogue; and more significantly the use of parody–imitation with
distanciation. None of the strategies and techniques either reject or accept
representation of reality, but re-present which implies both imitation and
referentiality as well as difference and auto-referentiality. They aim at
problematisation of representation so far as to assert our understanding of
the past is through discourse constructed by us, not given to us. The ultimate
takeaway for the reader may be perplexing, for, to appropriate C. H.
Sisson’s lines, “[i]f things seem not to be as once they were / Perhaps they
are as once they seemed to be” (1998, 376). Besides, history is not a
coherent, monolithic, final reality. It does refer to a reality. However, this
reality is a human construct. Hence, the arrangement or the emplotment of
the material contributes to the problematisation of the representation of
reality. In the next section, I explore the problematisation of representationality

in literary realism in the novel with regard to narrative conventions.
The Problematisation of Representationality in Literary

Realism with Regard to Narrative Conventions
“I said that the words were real, Henry. I did not say that what
they depicted was real.” (Ackroyd 1993, 98)
In historiographic metafiction, problematisation of representationality (or

alternatively referentiality) is of great concern. Whereas literary realism
endeavors to employ some conventions in order to foster the illusion of
reality and therefore to establish representationality, postmodernist
historiographic metafiction including Chatterton both draws upon and takes
distance from the very conventions to problematise any representational
view of art and literature. It re-presents–self-reflexively puts in a crisis–the
possibility of representationality. As in literary realism, Chatterton
establishes the mimetic view of literature and art. In so doing, it however
challenges the very view. It, in effect, parodies the mimetic (representational)
view of art. Whilst literary realism tries to establish the possibility of
representationality and postulates art as representational, Chatterton
constantly reminds the reader of the process of its own construction, hence,
auto-referentiality. It, nonetheless, never abandons representationality. As
Hutcheon observes, metafiction “paradoxically uses and abuses the conventions
of both realism and modernism and does so in order to challenge their
transparency, in order to prevent glossing over the contradictions that make
the postmodern what it is: historical and metafictional, contextual and self-
reflexive, ever aware of its status as discourse, as a human construct” (1988,
53). In the same vein, in what follows narrative strategies and techniques,
concerning literary realism’s conventions, which lead to the problematisation
of referentiality are discussed.
Literary realism postulates the existence of the referent as external
and real. In other words, the text objectively and impersonally refers to the
external reality. Consequently, it conventionally regards the reader as
passive. By contrast, historiographic metafiction, including Chatterton,
exposes the fictionality of the referent. The text does refer to a referent (or
a set of referents). Nevertheless, in effect, referentiality is constructed and
66 Chapter Three
created in the writing-reading process. As Hutcheon discusses, “it also

creates a heterocosm through those words because the representation is of a
fictive referent” (1980, 97). That is, in metafiction the text is not just a
microcosm directly having access to and reflecting the macrocosm–the
outside world and reality. It is a heterocosm whose referents are not external
but fictive and created, not unreal. In other words, historiographic
metafiction, including Chatterton, acknowledges its status as fictional at the
level of subject matter and structure and in so doing creates an autonomous
world. It, therefore, implies active participation of the reader. Having
established itself as an historical text in the vein of literary realism–thus,
suggesting referentiality–by dealing with the story of Chatterton, the text
undermines its referentiality by distorting the very conventions through self-
reflexivity and engagement with its own process of writing and construction.
A note of caution should be made here: that the referent is fictive does not
mean it is unreal, but that its reality is a construct, similar to the external
reality. This status is produced mainly through the use of the techniques of
mise en abyme, parallelism and self-reflexivity.
Mise en abyme plays a central role in the novel. The technique is
highly self-reflexive and creates auto-referentiality to a large extent. Process
of artistic creation presented in the three stories (Charles’s, Wallis-
Meredith’s and Chatterton’s) is a mise en abyme of the novel’s act of
creation. Each story within the novel echoes the two others and the novel
itself as a whole. As a case in point, Chatterton’s reveal of his method of
writing in Chapter Six is highly illuminating. The narrator, supposedly
Chatterton, lays bare in detail how he copied the original and combined the
present style with the old (Ackroyd 1993, 41) culminating in his confession
that his “method was as follows” (52). He used materials from old books
including “Holinshed” (52), imitated their language and vocabulary and
added his own materials to it. As the narrator says, with the materials “I
could fabricate an appearance of great Age as closely as if my new invented
Papers were the very ones from the Chests of St Mary Redcliffe” (52). Self-
reflexive references are made to the novel as an act of creation. The narrator
continues:
Poetry was my device. I invented my self as a monk of the

fifteenth century, Thomas Rowley; I dressed him in Raggs, I
made him Blind and then I made him Sing. I compos’d Elegies
and Epicks, Ballads and Songs, Lyricks and Acrosticks, all of

them in that curious contriv’d Style which speedily became the
very Token of my own Feelings; for, as I wrote in Rowley’s
hand, “Syke yn the Weal of Kynde,” which is as much to say,
“All things are partes of One.” (53 emphasis added)
After giving a poem in the style presented above, the narrator comments
upon the effect of his writing: “[t]hus, do we see in every Line an Echoe,
for the truest Plagiarism is the truest Poetry” (53 emphasis added). This
asserts and echoes the novel’s style and strategies: using certain devices and
techniques in the act of writing leads to the work as a creation. It imitates
and problematises simultaneously. The revelation and reflection of the
novel as a construction, contrivance and a process of writing and the
importance of narrative devices are made explicit specifically with regard
to the terms which are italicised in the sentence. The use and significance
of the technique of mise en abyme is highly illuminating here, for this part,
supposed to belong to Chatterton, is itself fabricated by a Mr. Joynson, not
by Chatterton himself, which is itself fabricated by Ackroyd. However, in a
sense it best manifests the style of Thomas Chatterton, Joynson and
Ackroyd. These stories or (little) narratives within the novel echo each other
in the sense that they reflect each other’s narrative methods whilst
problematising each other in that each offers a contradictory version of
reality. The strategy, further, problematises notions of transparency,
objectivity and passivity esteemed in literary realism, for it requires an
active role of readers, as opposed to the passive role literary realism posits
for them. As Hutcheon states, in metafiction “the reader is made aware of
the fact that literature is less a verbal object carrying some meaning, than it
is his own experience of building, from the language, a coherent
autonomous whole of form and content. This whole is what is meant here
by the term ‘heterocosm’” (1980, 42 emphasis added). The reader’s
attention is, accordingly, drawn not to the language as a medium but to the
act of construction and creation. Therefore, the text is an artefact and the
reader an active agent.
Similarly, Merk’s exposition of the techniques and methods
employed in the portrait is another mise en abyme which echoes and reflects
the strategies and techniques in the novel. Taking the pictures of the
painting, Merk realises that the cracks are not as deep as he expected: “most
68 Chapter Three
of them occurred in the varnish rather than in the paint itself” (Ackroyd
1993, 144). His detailed description and analysis of the painting and the
consequent are as follows:
So he mixed pure alcohol and water in order to remove this

faded exterior and, as slowly he rubbed the dissolvent across the
canvas, the newly-exposed paint seemed for a moment to glow
in the unaccustomed light and air. With the varnish gone, the
successive layers of paint became visible, and Merk could see
the outline of some other object glimmering faintly behind the
candle and the books. Inside the face of the sitter, too, another
face could just barely be discerned; it was a younger face and,
as it seemed to Merk, one that expressed suffering. (Ackroyd
1993, 144 emphasis added)
The narrative continues with “[t]he face of the sitter dissolved, becoming
two faces, one old and one young” (144 emphasis added). This exposes the
method of juxtaposition of the old with the new echoing the painter,
Chatterton, Wallis, as well as Ackroyd’s style. A metafictionist sheds light
upon the techniques which produce a make-belief by disclosing them just
as Merk is doing the painting. The subject matter of the novel here is
exposing Ackroyd’s style and technique in this novel. As Hutcheon
contends, “[s]ince fiction is not a way of viewing reality, but a reality in its
own right, the fictive heterocosm will have its own rules which govern the
logic or motivation of its parts. It will have rules or codes of which the
reader becomes gradually aware as he proceeds” (1980, 90). The reader is
accordingly called upon not to passively accept the text as a direct reference
to the external reality but to actively discover the codes and rules governing
the heterocosm–the novel, consequently, particularity of the text as opposed
to universality postulated in criticism throughout history. Note that the
novel is not anti-referential. However, its referentiality is created, made.
This is best manifest when Meredith says, “I said that the words were real,
Henry. I did not say that what they depicted was real” (Ackroyd 1993, 98).
In other words, what they depict–the work of art postulated by literary
realism as representational–cannot not refer to an outside referent; its
referent is created. As Hutcheon puts it, “the actual referents of those words
are not necessarily real in the context of empirical reality” (1980, 90-1).
Indeed, to analyse and judge a work of art in terms of its degrees of
referentiality to the external reality is fallacious, for the very reason that its
referent is fictional, not unreal.
Another case of the technique of mise en abyme occurs when Philip
reads a story called The Last Testament. It is a story of a poet who is “too
ill to compose the verses which had brought him eternal fame; that, in fact,
it had been the poet’s wife who had written them for him. The plot seemed
oddly familiar to Philip but he was not sure if he had read this novel some
years before, or if it resembled some daydream of his own” (Ackroyd 1993,
42-3). Then, he turns to the last pages of the book and the story of “an actor
who believes himself to be possessed by” some spirits (43). The story he
has just read “seemed familiar to Philip” (43). He remembers that he has
“read the story of Stage Fire” by Harriet Scrope. It is the story of “a poet
who believed himself to be possessed by the spirits of dead writers but who,
nevertheless, had been acclaimed as the most original poet of his age” (43).
Immediately Philip remembers he has already read The Last Testament: a
story by Harriet about a novelist whose secretary, totally aware of her
employer’s style, has written many of his works. The story is similar to the
one Philip is holding. This section reflects and echoes the occupational
relation between Charles and Harriet. Harriet asks Charles to ghost-write
her. It also echoes Chatterton’s style, forgeries and the autobiographical
section in the novel.
Moreover, it is a self-reflexive comment upon Ackroyd’s, as well
as other metafictionists’, style and strategies of writing. All are similar in
terms of the narrative strategies and techniques they use. The technique of
mise en abyme shatters the illusion of objectivity and transparency, for it
lays bare the process of creation and offers the work as an artefact. It
demystifies and imparts the fictional relation between the novel and its
referents to the reader by exposing the strategies and techniques employed
by the writer. Not that the novel can by no means refer to the external reality,
but that its relation to it is indeed through fictive referents. Hutcheon
suggests “such a relation is metaphoric rather than referential (that is with a
real referent) . . . the locus of reference gradually changes from the readers’
linguistic, literary, and existential experience in general, to include their
experience of that text in particular” (1980, 98). One may possibly suggest
it as allegorical, for it is extended throughout the novel. Whether allegorical
or metaphoric, it reveals each text creates its own particular referents with
70 Chapter Three
the help of the reader, hence, particularity of a text, be it of historical or

literary. In addition, the readers’ task is more active and difficult, for they
must create this heterocosm in their imagination. Also, they must be familiar
enough with theoretical issues–a responsibility lacked in literary realism.
This leads to another aspect of the novel which makes it distinct
from literary realism: parallelism. Whilst realist novels mainly operate
through a chronological order, Chatterton is narrated based upon not the
chronological order or the cause-and-effect pattern but parallelism. The
narrative first establishes itself as the realist novel by the use of biographical
information and third person point of view in the vein of literary realism. It
benefits from the third person point of view, the first person as in the
autobiography and detailed descriptions. It has also a beginning, a middle
and an end as in the realist novel. Yet, unlike the realist novel, it ends with
three endings each of which at contradiction with the two others. It, then,
challenges and violates the conventions and their upshot–representationality–
by the introduction of a first-person point of view and dispersion of the
narrative with two more stories set at different times.
This mingling of three levels of time creates a high amount of self-
reflexivity and self-consciousness. It has also the merit of alienation effect
which constantly distracts the reader from unconsciously and passively
involving in the story not to naïvely accept its reality. Unlike literary realism
which aims at presenting a monolithic single God-like authoritative voice or
a set of voices which attest each other in giving just one version of reality
and meaning, this provides a set of contradictory voices and meanings. The
novel, instead, offers multiplicity of voices which are not, in Barthes’s
words, “original” but “blend and clash” (2000, 149). Compared to the realist
novel, Chatterton is more heterogeneous and carnivalesque due to its self-
contradictory versions of reality and dispersion of chronological order.
Liberal humanisms’ notions of rationality as created by the chronological
order, causal relationships, originality and authority which all lay claim to
a final truth (reality) are accordingly questioned. It, instead, proposes a
parallel relation between the (little) narratives within the novel.
The autobiography section in which Chatterton is exposing his
own style and forgeries is an attempt to show that the text is auto-
representational. In effect, having a character within the narrative relate his
own tale and story draws the reader’s attention away from the authoritative
voice (the third person point of view) toward the work as an artefact. It also
creates a mise en abyme, thus, auto-referentiality. The third person
omniscient point of view is imitated to confirm reliability. It, however, is
questioned by a shift to the first person by a character within the narrative
relating his own tale. The novel alternates between different narrative
voices. Even regardless of the shift in the point of view, the third person
point of view itself is not homogeneous. It stands for different voices. For
instance, the third person point of view in the prologue establishes and
confirms the agreed idea of the death of Chatterton as a suicide. Nonetheless,
it assumes another voice whilst presenting Charles’s sections: Chatterton
faked his own death and continued under different names. The novel
provides a multiplicity of voices which contradict and question each other.
Therefore, literary realism’s objective reliable narrator assuming a God-like
position is highly questioned. In other words, this implies that the reliability
and credibility the reader of the realist novel may assume for the third person
point of view is accordingly questioned and contested.
Namely, the three levels of time and characters presented in the
narrative have many things in common. Almost all the major characters are
artists, suffer from despair and poverty, copy other’s works with their own
innovation and are in love with the past. Thus, they parallel and echo each
other. The three major characters (Chatterton, Meredith and Charles) are
great lovers of antiquity and art: many times the narrative (including
Chatterton’s assumed autobiography) refers to Chatterton as a lover of
antiquity. Charles’s rapturous curiosity about the painting extended by his
historical investigation of the painting and the documents is an indication of
his interest in art and the past. In addition, the discussion of art between
Meredith and Wallis indicates their obsession with art and literature.
Moreover, they echo each other in that they are all forgers. In this sense,
Ackroyd is similar to Chatterton. Just as Chatterton imitated the voice of a
medieval monk, so Ackroyd brings the eighteenth-century poet alive; that
is, he has faked Chatterton.
Furthermore, in Chapter Eight Merk is introduced as a forger. As
he tells Sadleir: “You don’t see what’s staring you in the face. You don’t
see that I painted all of Seymour’s last pictures” (Ackroyd 1993, 88). He
passed his work off as Seymour. Sadleir has kept most of the paintings, for
he knows by Seymour’s death the price will increase. Seymour is in despair,
72 Chapter Three
suffers from arthritis and cannot even “hold a newspaper” (71). Once more,
the motivation behind the act of forgery is laid bare: economic incentives
and interests. Again, a parallel is made between Merk, Charles, Chatterton
and Meredith. This exposes the ideological or personal interests involved in
the production of a work of art which the reader of the realist novel has been
persuaded to mistakenly accept as direct access to reality. The technique
functions in the vein of mise en abyme: by focusing upon the act of forgery
amongst the characters, it self-reflexively comments upon the novel’s
methods and strategies. In so doing, the novel consequently introduces itself
as an artefact, not a medium through which reality is accessible.
As another case in point, at the end of the section where Charles is
introduced, he feels the appearance of Thomas Chatterton touching his
shoulder, aware of his sickness and despair. This is boosted by the symbolic
act of the leaves falling from the trees coinciding with Charles’s pain (2).
Similar to Chatterton, Charles lives in poverty recognising “how poor he
was and how much poorer he was likely to become” (5). Charles is sick too:
“[m]y heart does ache now. . . . And a drowsy numbness pains my sense”
(26). Once more, a parallel is made between Chatterton and Charles. The
strategy questions the realist method of narrating based upon chronological
order (as employed in history-writing). It also brings the theoretical issue
into the surface making it as a theme. By contrast, the realist novel makes
attempts to hide its artistic techniques to offer itself as an objective medium.
Charles and Meredith at times feel the apparition of Chatterton.
Meredith has seen the image of Chatterton a few times: “‘[h]ave you passed
Chatterton on the stairs again, George?’ he [Wallis] said at last. ‘What was
that?’ ‘In your dream. You told me how you saw Chatterton’” (98). Even
before that Meredith has seen the apparition of Chatterton: “‘[n]ow I have
nothing to say.’ But he was silent only for a moment. ‘Did I tell you, Henry,
that I dreamed of Chatterton the other night? I was passing him on some old
stairs. What does that signify?’” to which Wallis retorts, “‘I believe stairs
are an emblem. Was that your word? Stairs are an emblem of time’” (86).
Meredith is going to commit suicide but is dissuaded when he sees
Chatterton’s spirit. Here again he is associated with Chatterton, not through
a causal relation as in the realist novel but because Chatterton is reported to
have committed suicide. At the end of the novel, Charles, Meredith and
Chatterton who are dead join whilst holding their hands together: “[t]wo
others have joined him [Chatterton]. . . . They link hands, and bow towards
the sun” (147). This is the culmination of violating realist conventions of
causality and chronological order. Moreover, the novel exposes that the
ending is artificially and artistically fabricated as opposed to the happy
ending of the realist novel. The reader accordingly realises that, as Meredith
says, “[t]he greatest realism is also the greatest fakery” (86). As is implied,
realism is the production of an artistic act. The real turns out to be a fake,
hence, creation and fabrication of reality. To create a sense of realism one
has to fake and to fake is not realistic, for the production is not the original.
The novel, therefore, draws upon the very convention of the realist novel
whilst questioning its representationality by self-reflexively drawing the
reader’s attention to the process of the text’s construction.
Self-reflexivity highly challenges and questions representationality
and literary realism’s claim to objective reality. The strategies discussed so
far do create a great amount of self-reflexivity. Aside from them, self-
reflexivity is also best manifest in the novel’s involvement and obsession
with art and literature as well as its own strategies and techniques. Indeed,
it is self-conscious–conscious of its own status as an artefact. That is, it takes
as a theme and brings to the level of subject matter theoretical and
philosophical issues concerning art and the ways through which a work of
art including the novel itself is constructed and accordingly given meaning
artistically–by artistic manipulation of techniques. Unlike the realist novel
that tries to present itself as a “slice of life” which is unified, coherent,
objective, monolithic, authoritative and transparent, the novel exposes its
conventionality through self-reflexivity and self-consciousness. Bringing
theoretical issues into the novel as a subject matter disrupts any realistic
representation as well as the novel’s direct and objective access to the
external world. The overt discussion of, and obsession with, art and
literature amongst the characters is highly illuminating. Almost all
characters (including Chatterton, Charles, Meredith, Harriet, Wallis, Philip,
Merk, Maitland, Cumberland and Tilt) are involved in art and its criticism.
Whereas the realist novel establishes itself as a medium to the external
reality to institutionalise representationality, Chatterton presents itself as a
criticism in artistic practice and in view of that highlights its auto-
referentiality.
74 Chapter Three
Self-reflexivity lays bare the devices and challenges the notions of

objectivity and impersonality of the artist as promulgated in realism. As
Patricia Waugh contends, “[i]n literary fiction it is, in fact, possible only to
‘represent’ the discourses of that world” (1986, 4). This is made possible
through exposing the discourses, including that of liberal humanism, by
narrative strategies including self-reflexivity. Furthermore, the technique
helps the novel underlie the discourses of literary realism and liberal
humanism. By overtly discussing theoretical and artistic issues, the novel,
therefore, suggests that reality is made in the discourse by artistic strategies
and techniques such as those manipulated in the portrait that Charles
possesses and the techniques which Merk reveals. Edward asks his father,
“‘[h]e’s alive in the picture, isn’t he?’” Charles replies, “‘[s]eeing is
believing,’” (Ackroyd 1993, 80), a view also shared by Sarah (72). This is
a self-reflexive remark upon the realist art which exposes the realist
convention of mimesis and imitation. This obsession with art and literature
and artistic creation is made more apparent and extended regarding the
symbolic name of Mr. Sybil Poetry Leno who keeps uttering “[p]oetry and
poverty” (6 emphasis added) and the discussion of poetry between Charles
and Andrew Flint, or Mr. Slimmer form whom “poetry must be direct and
it must be inspired” (100 emphasis added), to name but a few.
The preoccupation with art culminates and becomes more
intensified in the portrait Charles possesses which has a symbolic function.
It assumes different meanings whose multiplicity is elaborated upon in the
next chapter. Amongst them is its symbolic representational significance: it
stands for the act of representation of reality. In this sense, it is a microcosm
for art in general and the present novel in particular. However, whilst it
stands for the real Thomas Chatterton, the portrait fails; as Wallis, whose
ideas and attitudes can stand for the mimetic view of art, feeling impatient
and uncomfortable finds it impossible to “portray the human body in all its
glory” (102)–to portray the things as they really are. A kind of poetic
revelation occurs to him. Finally, Merk is asked to touch up the portrait so
that it may look more real. Nevertheless, as he is doing so it self-destructs.
This symbolically marks the impossibility of the representation of reality.
In effect, it reflects and mirrors the novel itself, hence, problematisation of
representation. Discussions over the portrait Charles possesses and the one
by Wallis and the techniques employed in them self-reflexively lay bare the
novel’s style and narrative strategies. Therefore, as discussed, the novel

self-reflexively refers to itself and its artistic creation at the level of both
subject matter and structure. It can suggestively be presented as a new
Poetics or Defence of Poetry defending art and literature and rejecting any
view and judgement of art based upon real-unreal binary opposition as a
valid touchstone. As Hutcheon puts it, “[t]ruth is a meaningless criterion,
for art is not verifiable” (1980, 132). In this light, Sarah questions the
validity of such a criterion by saying “‘who’s to say what is real and what
is unreal?’” (Ackroyd 1993, 22) when the real is a construct.
As metafiction, this novel is obsessed with form and structure to
break the automatisation. “The breaking of the frame of convention,” as
Waugh contends, “deliberately lays bare the process of automatization that
occurs when a content totally appropriates a form, paralysing it with fixed
associations which gradually remove it from the range of current viable
artistic possibilities” (1986, 68-9). Therefore, once again, any mimetic view
of literature as universal and objective which requires a passive reader is
called into question by the novel’s drawing the reader’s attention to its
particular construction. About Stewart Merk the narrator says, he “was a
fine and subtle painter but one who was preoccupied with technique. For
him the pleasure of painting rested in formal execution and not in
imaginative exploration, in mimesis rather than invention” (1993, 129
emphasis added). Nonetheless, he ironically exposes the devices by
scrutinising the portrait. In so doing and drawing the reader’s attention to
the work’s fictionality, he undermines any absolute mimetic relation
between the work and the external reality. Similarly, Ackroyd is obsessed
and concerned with form, however, for a hybrid purpose: to suggest
representationality and auto-representationality. Making an ironic contrast
between Merk’s mimetic view and his self-reflexive act of exposing the
techniques, the novel indeed lays bare its own narrative strategy. Also,
Charles’s failure in noticing the documents as fakes is due to his
representational view, for he does not realise that they are created through
employing realist strategies. Self-reflexivity and the novel’s obsession with
art and its own narrative techniques undermine its historical referentiality
by offering it as an artefact whilst real and historical information gives
credibility and plausibility to the fictive, thus, problematisation of
referentiality. In fact, Meredith’s words indicate postmodernists’ stance
76 Chapter Three
concerning the issue of representation: “‘I can endure death. It is the

representation of death I cannot bear’” (2, 86). As implied in Meredith’s,
the novel does not reject its relation to the outside world as representational;
nor does it deny the reality. However, it asserts that representation is the
production of a set of artistic conventions, consequently, created, not given.
In short, the problematisation of the representation of reality in
Chatterton was discussed in the light of postmodern theories. First, the
narrative techniques and strategies specifically parody by which the
representation of reality in historiography is put in a crisis were explored at
the level of structure and subject matter. Second, it was shown how the
narrative aims at problematising historiography and referentiality by
imitating and simultaneously taking distance from it to suggest reality as a
construct. Finally, how the narrative used and abused the conventions of
literary realism with regard to narrative strategies and techniques to
problematise the representation of reality and reference was delineated and
discussed. In the next chapter, I examine and analyse Chatterton to show
how boundaries are blurred in the novel to problematise modernist anti-
representationality. Furthermore, I elaborate upon how meaning is
constructed through artistic process.
CHAPTER FOUR
BOUNDARIES BLURRED
Introduction
“In any case novelists don’t work in a vacuum.” (Ackroyd 1993,
64)
In this chapter, I explore how different boundaries are blurred to

problematise the representational and anti-representational views. Indeed,
Chatterton is not completely anti-representational. As opposed to
modernism and especially the avant-garde for which the novel is totally
autonomous, it makes the representation of reality possible by now and
again referring to the historical, that is the outside world. However, it
questions this idea, but does not reject it, which problematises modernism’s
anti-representationality. The novel rather asserts that reality is a human
construct created in the process of narration. In effect, the novel
simultaneously portrays both anti-representation and representation. It
constantly reminds the reader of the artificiality of its representation not in
a sense that representation is impossible, but that it is created in the process
of narration. Art refers to the outside world. Yet, its reference is through
fictive referents. Indeed, the novel as a type of historiographic metafiction
is still imitative, however, with a critical eye. It resorts to imitation in order
to question the relationship between the work and the external reality as real
and natural. It asserts that the relation is constructed by human agents
through the artistic process of narration. To do so the novel dismantles and
blurs the traditional and conventional boundaries within a narrative.
I further focus upon the novel’s obsession with its own process of
construction to demonstrate how meaning is constructed. The novel reveals
that meaning is created through certain narrative techniques and strategies
such as parody and mise en abyme. In other words, it is not a product but a
process. Therefore, different narrative strategies and emplotments result in
78 Chapter Four
different meanings each of which completely contradicts the others. I

explore instances where the novel problematises representationality by self-
consciously referring to itself as an artefact, to the process of writing and to
its diegetic–telling–status.
Boundaries Blurred
“But who is to say what is fake and what is real?” (Ackroyd
1993, 70)
As mentioned earlier, Chatterton obscures the conventional boundaries,

particularly binary oppositions including life/art, original/fake, reality/fiction,
art/criticism, history/fiction, form/content and so on and so forth.
Historiographic metafiction calls into question and dismantles the boundaries
which have ideological implications privileging the one over the other. It
does so to challenge the naturalness and transparency of these totalising
discourses which remain unquestioned in literary realism. It uses the very
conventional boundaries whilst questioning them by drawing the reader’s
attention to the fact that they are not natural but arbitrary, made by human
beings with political, economic and/or ideological interests. Of central
significance is the boundary between reality and fiction, respectively
implying representation and anti-representation. Postmodernist re-presentation
contests liberal humanism’s attempt to separate the artistic from the real. It
does so by making manifest the paradoxes in the integration of the aesthetic
and the real (Hutcheon 1988, xii), be it political, historical or social. Anti-
representationality, as expressed especially in the avant-garde prescribing a
total break from the past and a focus upon anti-representationality of the
text, is accordingly questioned in the novel. As Hutcheon puts it, “[w]hat
historiographic metafiction challenges is both any naïve realist concept of
representation but also any equally naïve textualist or formalist assertions
of the total separation of art from the world” (1988, 125). This is most
evident in bringing the historical into the fictive through paratexts.
Consequently, the text refers to the outside world. Thus, insertion of the
historical within the narrative which is in the form of prose results in
producing a sense of realism. In this chapter, I explore different cases of
obscuring binary oppositions in Chatterton, especially the one between the
real and the fictive.
Boundaries Blurred 79
Throughout the novel external connections are made between art

and real life. This is reflected at the level of form by using different narrative
strategies and at the level of subject matter by discussing the very idea. The
most significant factor in deconstructing anti-representationality is that the
novel is about an historical figure. Real references are made to Chatterton’s
life and career. Paratexts contribute to the possibility of representation. For
instance, Chatterton’s and Meredith’s real poems are interspersed throughout
the novel which manifest and establish an external connection between the
inner world of the text and that of the external reality. This stands at odds
with modernism which abandons the historical for the sake of the text’s
autonomy. Moreover, the obsession with the past and the historical is highly
emphasised in studying the portrait Charles possesses. In effect, the act of
studying the portrait stands for the act of studying the historical past as is
done by historiographers. Hence, this indicates the novel’s approximate
relation to the outside world, the past, for knowing is a matter of
representation. We come to know the past through representation, be it
historical or literary, which is now blurred in the novel. Accordingly, the
novel highlights its possible representationality. It self-reflexively and self-
consciously draws the reader’s attention to artistic possibility of
representing the external reality by suggesting itself as an historical text. In
Hutcheon’s words “[p]ostmodernist reference, then, differs from modernist
reference in its overt acknowledgement of the existence, if relative
inaccessibility, of the past real (except through discourse)” (1988, 146).
Indeed, this acknowledgement implies that the real exists but is constructed
through an artistic process. Postmodernism’s acknowledgement of the
existence of the real as a social, ideological construct through the process of
representation undermines modernism’s autonomy, for it highlights
literature’s worldliness. Nonetheless, the very modernist self-reflexivity
undermines the possibility of representationality established in the novel by
drawing the reader’s attention to the novel’s status as an artefact. Whereas
modernism does not challenge its autonomy and status as an art,
historiographic metafiction including Chatterton does. The acknowledged
implausible, fictional elements, help the reader to assume the work’s artistic
autonomy. Yet, the historical references to real events offer degrees of
worldliness, hence, the novel as representational. In fact, Chatterton
80 Chapter Four
problematises both representationality and anti-representationality of art in

general and literature in particular.
Of central significance in problematisation of anti-representationality
suggesting the possibility of representationality is the implication of the
portrait of Chatterton that Charles possesses. Many times the novel points
to the portrait’s possibility of artistic representation. After Charles dies
Edward looks at the portrait. Although it is already revealed that the portrait
is a fake, the narrator says, “‘Chatterton’ remained, securely fastened to the
wall, and to Edward it seemed even more real; it was brighter, perhaps even
larger, than before” (Ackroyd 1993, 144). The painting seems “brighter,”
for it has been given other meanings more illuminating for Edward and
possibly for the sophisticated reader. Here the painting, although it is a fake,
refers to the external reality which is the real Chatterton. It also makes
references to Charles himself. Edward “knew that ‘Chatterton’ had some
connection with his father’s own death” (145). Edward sees the portrait as
representing both Chatterton and his own father. This connection is not just
made by verisimilitude, but by parallelism. There is something shared by
the two which is best reflected in the portrait: hopelessness, despair and
death and therefore the representationality of art.
Moreover, this effect is created through artistic techniques used by
the painter, suggesting the possibility of artistic representation. The portrait
seems so real to Edward that he could “smell the arsenic” (145). Edward
sees his own father again in his own reflection in the glass in front of him.
As the narrator describes the scene, “Edward had not yet chosen to look
closely at the man lying upon the bed but now, when he did so, he stepped
back in astonishment: it was his father lying there” (145). As the narrative
continues, “[h]e could not move and after a few moments he realised that
he was staring at the reflection of his own face in the glass, just in the place
where his father’s face had been. And now Edward was smiling, too. He
had seen his father again. He would always be here, in the painting. He
would never wholly die” (145 emphasis added). As is implied, the past will
never wholly die. It returns in the narrative. Therefore, it is possible to
represent the past. This highly suggests the possibility of artistic
representation, an idea underpinned by Hutcheon and Waugh. As Hutcheon
puts it, “[s]elf-reflective fiction, even in its most overt diegetic form, does
not mean the death of the novel as a mimetic genre, but perhaps rather its
salvation” (1980, 70). To Waugh “[m]etafiction, then, does not abandon ‘the
real world’ for the narcissistic pleasures of the imagination” (1986, 18). In
addition, the immortality of the artist suggested in the novel is due to the
possibility of artistic representation. The terms “reflection” and “glass”
highlight the idea of art as mirroring. Therefore, the novel still holds to
mimetic possibilities.
The same idea is reiterated at the end of the novel where Chatterton
says, “I will not wholly die, then” (Ackroyd 1993, 147); for he will live on
in future representations of himself such as that painted by Wallis and through
his own poetry as well as Chatterton. Indeed, it is also a self-reflexive
comment upon the representationality of the novel itself implying its
possibility. Chatterton says, “[m]y syllables, the remnants of antiquity. . . .
Will come back as shadows for posterity” (136). Ackroyd is using
Chatterton’s lines for expressing the idea of the possibility of artistic
representation. The past is still a living presence, yet, its presence is made
possible through artistic representations. The author employs actual lines of
Chatterton’s poetry and their meanings implying the possibility of artistic
representation to relate it to the novel’s representationality. In other words,
as Chatterton’s poem implies, representation is possible through art by
employing artistic techniques and strategies such as Chatterton’s use of
archaic words to fabricate a medieval poem. Moreover, modernism is not
usually obsessed with history and history-writing. The avant-garde,
specifically, is a total break from the past, whereas the novel’s profound
obsession with history, historiography and historical representation is of
great significant. This return for posterity is absent in modernism and
specifically in the avant-garde. Chatterton, however, undermines the idea
by self-reflexively suggesting itself as a fabrication, an artefact. On the one
hand, it points out the possibility of representation. On the other, it discloses
that representation is artificially constructed through extracts, here
Chatterton’s lines taken from the real world, and consequently challenges
both referentiality and anti-representationality of literature. In effect, as
Hutcheon points out, the world of fiction “has direct links to the world of
empirical reality, but it is not itself that empirical reality” (1988, 125). In
other words, metafiction confirms its “aesthetic autonomy while still
returning the text to the ‘world’” (Hutcheon 1988, 125). This can be read as
the most significant difference between the realist novel and postmodernist
82 Chapter Four
novel as well as between the modernist novel and postmodernist novel.

Whilst the realist novel makes attempts to offer itself as the very external
reality through verisimilitude and modernist novel as totally autonomous,
postmodernist fiction aims at the two; that is, being self-reflexive and
autonomous, it makes direct connections to the outside world as in
Chatterton to mark the artificiality of reality.
The possibility of artistic representation also manifests in Wallis’s
painting and discussion with Meredith. Wallis points out the possibility of
artistic immortalisation when he tells Meredith that, “you will be
immortalised” to which Meredith retorts “‘[n]o doubt. But will it be
Meredith or will it be Chatterton? I merely want to know’” (Ackroyd 1993,
2). This indicates the possibility of artistic representation. Although its
meaning is not fixed, the portrait represents something. This is supported by
the fact that the portrait has always been able to represent Chatterton, even
though mistakenly. The portrait is referential, whether it refers to Chatterton
or Meredith. Whereas modernism suggests the loss of meaning or
meaninglessness of art and the world, postmodernist art represents
something, hence, representationality of art. The outside world and the
world of discourse bear no especial meaning as modernists try to suggest,
whilst postmodernist metafiction endorses the existence of meaning as
made manifest in the above example. It, nonetheless, points out the
artificiality of meaning and representationality. For instance, modernists
leave the text without a sense of ending to suggest the meaninglessness, loss
or lack of any beginning, middle and end both in fiction and in the world.
As Waugh realises, “[m]odernist texts begin by plunging in in medias res
and end with the sense that nothing is finished, that life flows on.
Metafictional novels often begin with an explicit discussion of the arbitrary
nature of beginnings, of boundaries” (1986, 29 emphasis added). Waugh’s
comments explain why metafictionists, including Ackroyd, blur the
divisions to reveal the process through which such boundaries are
constructed. As in Chatterton, postmodernist novels draw upon the
beginning-middle-end pattern however self-reflexively and self-
consciously not to deny the existence of it but to suggest that it is an artistic
construct. Beginnings, middles and ends are artificially constructed. This is
most effectively shown in the artificial ending of the novel where the three
major characters join hands.
The possibility of artistic representation is once more evident in

the narrator’s commenting upon Wallis’s painting. As the narrator says:
And it was with a kind of pity that Wallis looked at the face of
Meredith, which had become the face of Chatterton in death–
not pity for himself at finishing the work but for the thing he had
created. This garret he had painted had become an emblem of
the world–a world of darkness, the papers scattered across the
floor its literature, the dying flower its perfume, the
extinguished candle its source of light and heat. (Ackroyd 1993,
107)
As indicated, Wallis’s painting now can stand for Chatterton not necessarily
because of the resemblance between Meredith and Chatterton but because
of the parallelism made between the two. The portrait represents death and
despair in both Meredith’s and Chatterton’s life. As a critic states, “Wallis’s
representation of Meredith as dead carries a prophetic force that leads to the
real death of his marriage to Mary” (Finney 1992, 255). Meredith continues,
“[a]nd that is why . . . this will always be remembered as the true death of
Chatterton” (Ackroyd 1993, 99). In other words, posterities will remember
Chatterton through this work of art, hence, the possibility of artistic
representation.
The possibility of artistic representation is also manifest in Philip’s
hybrid comment upon the manuscripts. He points to the same idea in saying
the manuscripts “‘were real . . . but they were not real . . .’” (142). Art is
both representational and anti-representational. This is what is meant by the
problematisation of the representation of reality. For instance, Meredith’s
words that “the greatest realism is also the greatest fakery” (86) imply the
possibility of artistic representation. Fakery–art–can become realism by the
use of certain artistic techniques. This idea is extended throughout the novel.
Sarah Tilt’s study of the issue of death is another witness of the possibility
of artistic representation of reality expanded in the novel:
She had examined the various images of death, from the

medieval depiction of the emaciated cadaver to the theatrical
richness of Baroque funerary monuments, from the lugubrious
narratives of Victorian genre painting to the abstract violence of
contemporary art, and so she was now able to chart many of the
84 Chapter Four
alterations in the presentation of the death-bed scene, natural or

pathetic, violent or solitary. And all the time it had been as if she
were watching her own death. (20 emphasis added)
As the term “presentation” indicates, Sarah envisions her own death in the
reflection or representation of death in artistic works, be they literature or
paintings. Therefore, the boundary between life and art–representation and
anti-representation in a sense–is constantly obfuscated. Hutcheon suggests
auto-representationality for this hybrid status. As she says, in auto-
representation “[r]epresentation is not annulled but turned in on itself, and
the ‘narration’ invades and pervades the ‘fiction’” (1980, 35). Alternatively,
this study suggests the terms of postmodernist re-presentation, for they
imply the novel’s possibility of reflecting both the outer and inner world of
the text. Paradoxically as it may seem, historiographic metafiction is still
imitative, yet, it challenges the imitative view of art by imitation. Therefore,
no literary work can be totally autonomous.
Blurring the boundaries and consequently the absent-present state
of affairs is extended throughout the novel and goes so far as to include the
issue of originality and creation as opposed to forgery, fake, copying,
borrowing and second-rate replicas. This can be investigated at the level of
subject matter, which is overtly self-reflexive and the structure. Whilst
modernism and especially the avant-garde crave for originality of the art,
innovation and creation, historiographic metafiction casts doubt upon the
notions in their pure sense of the term–no art can be totally original.
Metafictionists blur the boundary by suggesting that the fake can be original
and creative. In fact, they challenge such notions. There is an overt
discussion of art and the issue of originality as opposed to borrowing in the
novel when Philip points to the issue and asks, “[a]nd so what did Harriet’s
borrowings matter?” (Ackroyd 1993, 43). Borrowing, which in itself is an
action considered to be inferior by modernists and in particular by the avant-
garde, can instead be viewed as equalling originality. This is best evident in
the narrator’s words describing Philip’s state of mind upon the issue that,
“[i]n any case, Philip believed that there were only a limited number of plots
in the world (reality was finite, after all) and no doubt it was inevitable that
they would be reproduced in a variety of contexts” (43). This questions both
realism and modernism. First, reality is not finite. On the contrary, different
versions of an event to which the narrator refers as reality may produce
different meanings and consequently different realities, hence, multiplicity

of reality. Second, the idea of innovation and creativity of modernism,
especially emphasised by the avant-garde, is also questioned. That is, they
do not recommend putting old literary materials and themes in a new way
and using conventional techniques. Most modernists were highly
experimental, trying to completely break away from the past, whereas
metafictionists reuse old materials and artistic techniques to create
something new, as Ackroyd resorts to numerous times in his novel via the
allusions to Eliot’s poems. The pamphlet Charles and Philip hold reads,
“‘Chatterton knew that original genius consists in forming new and happy
combinations, rather than in searching after thoughts and ideas which had
never occurred before’” (36 emphasis added). This is a self-reflexive
comment upon the way Ackroyd is writing in the novel, challenging the
conventional notion of originality.
As opposed to the definition of the idea of originality and creativity
by modernists, the narrative instead offers an idea close to Harold Bloom’s
anxiety of influence. Taking the latter idea into consideration, one might not
call the novel original and creative in the sense that modernists and
especially the avant-garde define the terms. In other words, modernists and
the avant-garde crave for a separation from the past conventions including
the style of previous writers, but Chatterton questions the notions and
suggests that an artist may be influenced by others’ styles and ideas so that
one cannot tell the artist’s voice from others. This is manifest in Harriet and
Philip’s career as writers. Regarding their novels, the narrator comments:
The fact that two of Harriet Scrope’s novels resembled the much
earlier work of Harrison Bentley might even be coincidental. He
[Philip] was less inclined to criticise her, also, because of his
own experience. He had once attempted to write a novel but he
had abandoned it after some forty pages: not only had he written
with painful slowness and uncertainty, but even the pages he had
managed to complete seemed to him to be filled with images
and phrases from the work of other writers whom he admired. It
had become a patchwork of other voices and other styles, and it
was the overwhelming difficulty of recognising his own voice
among them that had led him to abandon the project. So what
right did he have to condemn Miss Scrope? (Ackroyd 1993, 43
emphasis added)
86 Chapter Four
This is a self-reflexive comment upon both historiography and fiction-

writing. One cannot be original and completely innovative when breaking
from the past. As the narrator points out, a critic like Philip cannot easily
recognise the original voice in a piece of literary work. However, that is not
a flaw in postmodernist sense. Here the narrative voice is that of a
postmodernist, such as Ackroyd in this case, who self-reflexively expresses
the novel’s own style of writing. It is also a commentary upon fiction-
making in general. Even the boundary between forgery and the anxiety of
influence are shattered. As a case in point, after Harriet quotes from Eliot
but attributes it to Shakespeare, Charles says “‘[i]t’s called the anxiety of
influence’” (62). Thus, the nature of forgery and the anxiety of influence
remains problematic. The idea is also expressed in Philip’s words talking to
Vivien. He comments, “‘[s]o I tried writing my own novel but it didn’t
work, you know. I kept on imitating other people. I had no real story, either,
but now . . . with this–with Charles’s theory–I might be able to’” (146-7).
This passage challenges the avant-garde’s idea of innovation and a complete
break from the past. He fails to write a novel due to the fear of copying
others, but now he finds it possible when being original is not equal to say
what nobody has not said before. Thanks to this new view of literature, he
is now able to use a familiar story and say it in different ways. He says, “I
must tell it in my own way” (147). Then he continues, “‘I might discover
that I had a style of my own, after all’” (147). As Philip observes, writers
tell familiar stories, allude to others and copy others whilst still being
original and having their own style. As Waugh points out, “[m]etafiction . .
. offers both innovation and familiarity through the individual reworking
and undermining of familiar conventions” (1986, 12). Philip’s observation
is self-reflexive that echoes Ackroyd’s own style and manner of storytelling
in the novel. In the same manner, Ackroyd has made a familiar story the
subject of his work.
When viewed as a self-reflexive commentary, the above-
mentioned example also takes an artistic shape at the level of form regarding
allusions to other writers and their styles. The narrative practices what it
preaches, if anything. It draws upon the conventions both used in literary
texts and historiography to blur predominantly conventional boundaries.
The narrative is an imitation of the realist novel whilst creating distance
from it. The idea of originality is highly questioned by parodying, that is,
copying whilst keeping distance from what it imitates, that is, the hypertext.
Yet, as discussed earlier, parody is not a mere copy or quotation. The novel
quotes from writers including T. S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock, “Ash Wednesday” and The Waste Land), John Keats and William
Wordsworth without mentioning their names, an act generally considered
to be plagiarism or intellectual property theft. Nevertheless, it results in the
emergence of a work which is completely different from a realist or a
modernist work whilst still sharing affinities. The absent-present and hybrid
state of affairs in the novel is achieved through already-established
conventions. Sadleir is an art dealer whose act of forgery reflects the same
theory. He declares that the three nudes’ paintings are fakes. He confesses
that he himself is a forger. Then, the greatest poets are fakers and pieces of
art are fakes in the same vein. Nonetheless, as Merk observes, “who is to
say what is fake and what is real?” (Ackroyd 1993, 70). One might conclude
that Chatterton “the greatest literary forger of all time” (13), Sadleir, Harriet
and Ackroyd himself are all great forgers and simultaneously the most
original artists. Therefore, subverting such boundaries highlights the fact
they are arbitrary constructions and that no singular object or thing
containing pureness, completeness and perfection exists. The idea is
expressed in Mr Leno’s words: “[t]his is not a perfect world” (6). Likewise,
there is no completely autonomous work of art, for in Harriet’s words “[i]n
any case novelists don’t work in a vacuum” (64), just as there is no totally
representational work of art, as the novel try to demonstrate. This is also
true of history. There are fantastic and fictive elements in history and there
are elements which refer to the external reality in literature.
The idea that there is no autonomous and original work of art is
also manifest in the symbolic use of the setting. For instance, describing
Charles’s house the narrator comments that: “[c]ertain of the original
features had been retained, however–in particular the staircase which,
although some of its boards were sagging and many of its banisters were
chipped or broken . . .” (7 emphasis added). This description most aptly
exemplifies postmodernism’s problematisation of originality, be it of
history or of a literary text. Also, the scene where Philip is witnessing a boy
and a young man walking is of symbolic significance:
Then he [the small boy] disappeared behind a canopied tomb

beside the nave and a few moments later a young man emerged
88 Chapter Four
from the other side; it was as if there had been a sudden

transformation within this ancient church. Philip was about to
rise from his seat in astonishment when he saw both the boy and
the young man passing at the top of the nave; they walked by
each other without any sign of greeting or recognition, and the
light from the window behind them blurred their outlines as they
crossed. Philip could see only shadows in front of him, and their
footsteps made no noise. (33-4 emphasis added)
Philip is waiting for their coming from the church. This ancient church is
not what it used to be. The past, like the church, has undergone
transformation and changes. Philip sees only shadows. This foreshadows
Charles’s coming from the church and having manuscripts which are
supposed to reveal the truth. This symbolically foreshadows the
impossibility of the manuscripts to be of any help. They do not illuminate
but rather obfuscate and create more questions. The boundaries between
fiction and reality as well as originality and second-handedness are so
blurred that it is impossible to discern reality from art.
The same idea that art and reality cannot be distinguishable recurs
when Harriet realises that she can take a familiar plot as a “vessel for her
own style” (63). Similarly, Ackroyd in the novel has resorted to a generally
known story of Chatterton. He has made the idea of the representation of
reality, which has been discussed throughout history, a subject matter. He
has also used and abused others’ styles, themes and lines from others’
works. Nevertheless, he is still original, for he has used and simultaneously
abused them to problematise the representational and anti-representational
views of art. Harriet, then, took Bentley’s novel as her “vessel” and “altered
the characters, changed their relationships, and, by the end, only the barest
outline of Bentley’s initial situation remained in place” (63). Accordingly,
whether the work is a mere copy or original is a problematising issue.
Moreover, any idea of originality is under question. As the narrator says,
“[t]he experience of employing a plot, even though it was the invention of
some other writer, had liberated her imagination; and, from that time
forward, all her novels were her own work. But in recent years even this
originality had begun to bore her” (63). However, Harriet still feels anxious
about plagiarising:
She could not bring herself to admit the borrowing, and this
mainly for reasons of pride; but, even if she did not herself
confess to it, the plagiarism might in any case be discovered and
an unwarranted suspicion cast over the rest of her work–even
over her first novel. Anxious reflection had so nourished the
problem that it seemed to encompass the whole of her past.
There was no escape from it. (63)
This is a self-reflexive comment upon the most original writers. Not that the
writer itself does not exist, but rather that originality in their writing does
not exist. Chatterton’s own career as a counterfeiter is central to the
discussion. He was highly influential for Romantic poets, but his creations
were faked. Chatterton, Meredith, Harriet and Ackroyd himself are
pretending and drawing from the style of other writers. Nonetheless, the
postmodernist way of borrowing and copying others–parodying indeed–is
in a sense original, innovative and creative, although it contradicts the
avant-garde’s definition of these qualities. The postmodernist method is
essentially copying with critical distance.
The novel suggests that “Blake was influenced by the work of a
forger and a plagiarist” (45), that is Chatterton. The reader is left with the
assumption that the whole Romantic generation was influenced by
Chatterton. Therefore, the idea of Romantic poets as being original is called
into question. Yet, their poetry and literature are still considered original.
Ackroyd’s own literary style reflects the novel’s subject matter. This is
clearly evident in the discussion between Joynson and Chatterton, in which
Joynson says: “‘[a]nd when at last you admit these Works to be your own,
the Confession will bring you Fame’” (56). Chatterton retorts, “‘[t]he Fame
of a great Plagiarist?’” “‘No, the Fame of a great Poet. You prove your
Strength by doing their Work better than ever they could, and then by also
doing your own,’” Joynson replies (56). Chatterton’s fabrication of Rowley
brought him fame, “the fame of a great Poet” in Joynson terms. His works
highly impressed a generation famous for its originality. Therefore, an act
may assume different meanings through the passage of time and by
narration. Meaning is created in the process of writing. This is made
possible by blurring the boundary between originality and imitation.
Furthermore, this amount of self-reflexivity and the artistic
manipulation of literary criticism and discussions within the narrative lead
90 Chapter Four
to another transcended boundary: art/criticism. The allusions, fictive

characters, stories within the novel and self-reflexivity pointing to the
process of construction emphasise the work as an artefact, whereas serious
theoretical discussions bandied between the characters make the text a work
of criticism. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the novel can be
regarded as a new defence of poetry. This appears most prominently in
Wallis and Meredith’s overt discussion over art, the idea of representationality
of art and artistic techniques. In this light, the text is a serious theoretical
piece of criticism in artistic form. Furthermore, taking literature and writing
as a major subject matter for an historical story, that of Chatterton, is the
culmination of blurring the boundary between history and fiction. It does so
in a critical way to challenge both any realist view of literature and any
modernist break from or nostalgic return to, history. It also shatters the
binary opposition of form and content. Literary fragments merge into each
other. In the middle of one part the other continues. In addition, the three
different stories merge into each other. The structure and form of the novel
reflect the subject matter, content. The novelist manipulates techniques and
strategies of writing and the idea of representation discussed by the
characters at the level of structure. The novel aesthetic obsession, as is
evident in the combination of the historical and the literary, paratextuality
and extracts from poet’s poems and self-reflexivity, reflects the theoretical
discussions over aestheticism and art and vice versa. Therefore, the novel
makes reference to the outside world–representationality–as opposed to
anti-representationality. The conventional boundaries defining and
privileging notions such as originality, innovation and creativity over
copying, borrowing and forgery are also blurred. In the next section, I
examine the novel’s obsession with, and emphasis upon, the construction of
meaning as a process rather than a product.
Meaning as a Process
“I suppose that’s the trouble with history. It’s the one thing we
have to make up for ourselves.” (Ackroyd 1993, 143)
As opposed to literary realism which treats the work of art and meaning as
a product, postmodernist metafiction focuses upon the idea of meaning as
constructed in the process of narration. Metafiction holds narrative
techniques and strategies responsible for producing different meanings. It

also differs from modernism, which itself postulates a meaninglessness of
both life and art by implying that meaning exists but is created through
narrative techniques and strategies. It does not overlook the diegetic aspect
of the work; on the contrary, it demonstrates how its composition is made
up. Chatterton self-reflexively and self-consciously points out its process of
construction and accordingly suggests meaning is constructed in the process
of narration. This meaning-as-a-process status is extended throughout the
novel. Nevertheless, in this section I analyse the leading and central cases
that indicate the idea of meaning as constructed in an artistic process.
Wallis’ painting in which he uses Meredith as a model for
Chatterton acquires different literary and historical meanings. Although it
is supposed to represent merely Chatterton, it stands for other persons and
concepts as well. Its meaning changes through the passage of time. The
narrator self-reflexively lays bare the process of construction:
Meredith was contemplating the rough surface of the road: “The

effect of that painting,” he began to say quite suddenly, “will be
quite different from anything we can understand now. Certainly
quite different from anything that you intend, Henry. It is the
same with a poem or with a novel.” Wallis thought he saw a face
at a ground-floor window, and he was startled for a moment.
“The final effect it has upon the world can never be anticipated
or measured or arranged.” Meredith was looking across at the
turbulent surface of the water. “That is what I mean by its
reality.” (Ackroyd 1993, 101 emphasis added)
By the “effect” or “reality” of the painting is meant the meaning of the

portrait. When the meaning changes, reality changes too. Consequently, as
the comment implies, realism’s attempt to present a final meaning
represented in Wallis’s act and ideas are questioned. On the other hand,
modernism’s penchant for depicting the world as absurd and meaningless is
also challenged. As Meredith observes, any work of art conveys meaning;
however, its meaning is not fixed and final but constructed and may undergo
changes over time. In effect, the meaning is determined by the artistic
strategies and techniques by which the work is created. Meredith says,
“[t]hese visible things are stage props, mere machinery” (87). When Wallis
“watched that absolute white drying slowly on the canvas he could already
92 Chapter Four
see ‘Chatterton’ as a final union of light and shadow” (102). Consequently,

the portrait’s meaning representing Chatterton is not a final product but the
creation of him by “light” and “shadow.” That is, he is being created, made
by artistic manipulation of colours. His representation in the painting is not
a result of imitation of an external reality but is created by artistic
techniques. Therefore, any meaning it may convey is a construct, made in
the process of artistic creation. Once more Ackroyd self-reflexively
comments upon how meaning is created in the process of creation. The
detailed description of the painting, revealing the ways in which colours
influence the painting, is highly self-reflexive. It gives a comment upon the
ways through which the meaning of a work of art, including Chatterton,
takes shape.
Wallis’s description of his painting self-reflexively lays bare his
devices. It is also a commentary upon how meaning is constructed through
artistic techniques:
When I have finished the drawing I will need to saturate it with

water, and then I can use a grey tint to block in the shade. After
that I put on my colour and allow it to dry: when it is firm, I can
use a hair pencil for all the details. As for the lights–” “Out,
damned light!” Meredith was staring at the ceiling once more.
“–As for the lights, I need only touch the drawing with water
and then rub it with a little piece of bread. That is my method, at
least.” (88 emphasis added)
As the term “method” self-reflexively signifies, the passage tells rather than
shows. Indeed, metafictionists, including Ackroyd, constantly expose the
methods and strategies by which their works are constructed. the narrator’s
comments upon Wallis’s act of making artwork also self-reflexively reveals
the devices. The narrator observes that: “[h]ere, at the still point of the
composition, the rich glow of the poet’s clothes and the brightness of his
hair would be the emblem of a soul that had not yet left the body; that had
not yet fled, through the open window of the garret, into the cool distance
of the painted sky” (103). Ackroyd reveals how this meaning–that
Chatterton is still alive spending the last moments of his life–is reproduced
by artistic techniques from Chatterton’s clothes to the hair’s colour. Art
imitates reality; indeed, reality is made artistically. The setting gives the
impression that Chatterton is going to die soon. It augments the idea and
meaning of suicide.
Moreover, as pointed to in the previous chapter, the portrait
Charles possesses bears multiple meanings all contracted by artistic
techniques. It comes to stand for the act of representation itself. It also
represents Chatterton. In addition, as Edward realises, the portrait reflects
the image of his father, Charles as well as Chatterton (145). It further comes
to symbolise the death of the author which is enhanced by the death of the
major characters in the novel. References are made to the idea. Meredith
touches upon the same issue by asking “[w]hen you buy something, when
it is your own, does it acquire a deeper reality?’” (97). He is referring to the
conditions under which meaning is exposed to change. Does meaning
change when the proprietor changes is a question he is raising. However,
this death in the portrait is not just a physical one. It bothers Mrs. Leno from
the beginning, for she can see “death on that face” (7). Mrs. Leno is the
owner of the portrait. This fear more broadly symbolises the fear of artists
having no control over their works and not being able to impose ultimate
meaning upon them any longer. It suggests multiplicity of interpretations
which bothers the realist reader and/or author. This is the death of the
author/owner and consequently that of the final meaning imposed upon a
work of art. This idea is clearly shown in the discussion between Philip and
Charles over the manuscripts. Philip asks for the name of the man who
possesses them to which Charles replies, “[n]obody can own the past” (36).
No one has control over the meaning of the past. Similarly, no one can
impose an ultimate meaning upon the past. In the same vein, the portrait has
multiple meanings. Its final destruction is of symbolic significance,
representing the destruction of any final meaning.
As discussed in Chapter Two, in historiographic metafiction the
existence of meaning is not rejected as is in modernism. What
metafictionists aim at is to demonstrate how a single event may come to
stand for a fact as best expressed in Philips words: “‘[e]vents which are
tragedies for us . . . are just changes for them’” (135). This statement can be
applied to Chatterton in the novel in that his death may be regarded as a
suicide, as in faking his own death, or as an unintentional accident.
Consequently, reality–the meaning we grant to an event–is something we
make, create and construct for many purposes. Harriet says, “that’s the
94 Chapter Four
trouble with history. It’s the one thing we have to make up for ourselves”
(143). Just as Chatterton made up the past by inventing a medieval poet and
influencing a whole generation as reflected in Wordsworth’s “Resolution
and Independence,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of
Chatterton,” and Keats’s “Endymion.” In Meredith’s words Chatterton
“invented an entire period and made its imagination his own: no one had
properly understood the medieval world until Chatterton summoned it into
existence” (98); just as Wallis made his version of Chatterton’s death; just
as Joynson fabricated the documents and Chatterton’s confession to give the
impression that Chatterton’s death was accidental; finally, just as Ackroyd
did the whole novel with its multiple narratives. They do so by explicitly
drawing the reader’s attention to the meaning-granting process. Ackroyd
has created his own version of Chatterton. The revelation of Chatterton’s
method of faking the Rowley poems (52) illustrates Ackroyd’s literary style
and how meaning is constructed in the process of narration in general.
Hence, the ways through which we grant meaning to historical events are
made clear.
Even when read as a suicide, Chatterton’s death assumes two
contradictory meanings. One is generally condemned as an indication of
weakness. The other raises Romantic poets’ acclaim who call it a glorious
act. For them, Chatterton was an emblem of individuality who stepped
beyond limitations, a marvellous boy who acted like an outcast, an idea
expressed in “Romantic Suicide: The Chatterton Myth and its Sequels.”
According to the Romantics, his suicide was not regarded as negative and
humiliating but glorious, courageous, a Promethean act. It was considered
as “a symbol of a fearless spirit that triumphed over death and was somehow
conceived as a victory of the individual against adversity” (Friend 124).
This becomes a topic of discussion between Harriet and Sarah. Harriet asks,
“‘[a]nd so the dead can be exalted by others feigning death?’” Sarah replies
“‘[t]he whole point of death is that it can be made beautiful. And the real
thing is never very pretty. Think of Chatterton–’” (21). Death as an
unpleasant issue can be made pleasant through art as in the case of
Chatterton. His suicide occurs as a result of his society. Ackroyd brings him
into a new focus and de-marginalises him in a sense. Chatterton’s suicide
accordingly becomes popular, turning into an ideology dominant in the
Romantic period. During the time, suicide was regarded as a rebellious act
of an outlaw. It was an emblem of the freedom of an individual, not a

rational man of the Enlightenment, who is no longer curbed by limitations.
Consequently, in this sense, Chatterton is viewed as a Romantic outcast.
Meaning as a process rather than a construct is evident in Wallis’s
description of his artwork, Chatterton’s exposition of his fakery in the letter
to his mother discussed in the previous chapter and Merk’s dissection of the
portrait. All three examples show the diegetic aspect of the novel and
highlight the processes through which they use certain artistic techniques to
create certain effects–meanings. For instance, Chatterton’s exposition in the
letter is Ackroyd’s own artistic fabrication. It is a fictive Chatterton.
Therefore, Chatterton’s words can represent and expose the strategies and
techniques of the novel. It highlights the narrative as a meaning-granting
process. In so doing, it comments upon how meaning in an historical or
literary narrative may be created and given to it. Merk takes some pictures
of the portrait. As the narrator points out, “each photograph would, in turn,
help him to reconstruct the painting” (144). In effect, the novel is a
dissection of the realist novel’s strategies and methods of feigning and
fabricating reality and consequently meaning.
This is true of the notion of forgery. Chatterton is described as “the
greatest literary forger of all time” (Ackroyd 1993, 13). The usual meaning
of fakery which has a negative connotation here acquires positive as well as
negative connotations. Joynson wants Chatterton to imitate dead poets.
Chatterton’s impression is negative. Joynson says, “‘I did not say Forge. Is
the work of Rowley a forgery?’” (56). Joynson’s point is that just as the
Rowley poems are regarded as genuine and original, this is an act of
creation, not forgery. Ackroyd has made a deliberate use and misuse of an
incident by offering different narratives and perspectives in the novel to
divulge into the reader that what we may assume as objective reality also
have different contradictory meanings throughout history. Consequently,
we come to know the past through the text and our representations. In
addition, the text and meanings it may offer are not products but actually
made in the process of narration as well as reading; hence, history–reality
and meaning by implication–is what we make in a process, not an objective
fact given to us.
To sum up, firstly the novel breaks the binaries including the one
between life and fiction, originality and copying, art and criticism, history
96 Chapter Four
and fiction and form and content. This problematises the anti-
representationality of art. Secondly, it also demonstrates that a literary work
is not a product, as implied in literary realism, but a process through which
reality and consequently meaning are created through artistic techniques
and strategies. Finally, it reflects how the portrait and death of Chatterton
assume different meanings through the process of fiction-making. The novel
in the vein of metafiction draws the reader’s attention to its own process of
creation. It does so self-reflexively and self-consciously by revealing the
devices both at the level of subject matter and structure. This problematises
the realist view of art as a product.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
This book concerns the problematisation of the representation of reality in

Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton. A postmodernist reading of the work is carried
out with a focus upon narrative strategies and techniques that make the
problematisation of representation and anti-representation possible.
Consequently, Chapter Two was devoted to postmodern criticism and
theory. It also presented an introduction to postmodern criticism defining
and discussing the notion of postmodernism in terms of history, theory and
literature. This was followed by a new poetics emphasising Hutcheon’s
theories. In the next section, postmodernist re-presentation in the light of
postmodern theory was discussed and defined to account for historiographic
metafiction’s characteristics. Next, how the view came to be put into
question was discussed.
The following section was devoted to the discussion of postmodernist
re-presentation as opposed to the representational and anti-representational
views. It was discussed that postmodernist re-presentation questions both
views by suggesting itself as both representational and anti-representational.
As mentioned, this type of representation is best shown in metafiction,
especially historiographic metafiction. It attempts to confront the past with
the present and modernist self-reflexivity. It merges boundaries and
questions binary oppositions between the past and the present as well as life
and art. The aim of postmodernist re-presentation is to highlight that “there
are no natural hierarchies; there are only those we construct” (Hutcheon
1988, 13 emphasis added). Therefore, we have come to a point where no
centre remains unturned. Postmodernist metafiction was also discussed in
this chapter, as well as how the postmodern mode grants meaning to events.
The next section was dedicated to historiographic metafiction
which sees history as hybrid, contradictory and heterogeneous. It was
revealed that historiographic metafiction juxtaposes the historical with the
98 Chapter Five
fictive to question the idea of reality and history as monolithic, unified and
coherent. It illuminates that meaning is constructed and given to an event
through narrative techniques and strategies or to use White’s terminology
“emplotment,” that is, the arrangement of incidents in the narrative. The
final section in Chapter Two was dedicated to narrative techniques and
strategies in problematisation of representation. It was discussed that
metafictionists in the manner of Russian Formalists try to lay bare narrative
strategies and techniques. Then, the term post-formalism was suggested for
metafictionists’ concern with and focus upon form and for their
deconstructist perspective. As explored, metafictionists also argue that the
literary work is an artefact, made by its creator. Afterward, the chapter
focused mainly upon the issue of parody, particularly its contribution to the
problematisation of the representation of reality.
Chapter Three was dedicated to the application of postmodern
theory discussed in Chapter Two to Ackroyd’s novel Chatterton. In the first
section, the problematisation of the representation of reality and
historiography was discussed. This was followed by the novel’s function as
a parody of history and historiography which was investigated and revealed
regarding Charles’s exploration of the portrait and Chatterton’s documents.
It was revealed and discussed how their representational possibility is
questioned and the idea of history as imitation-with-distortion is suggested.
The idea is also manifest in Sarah’s exploration of images of death
throughout history. Then, it was discussed how paratexts contribute to the
problematisation of representation by establishing real historical
information to be dismantled later on, as shown in the case of Chatterton’s
biographical account at the beginning of the story. In addition, the ways in
which historiographers make the illusion of historical authenticity were self-
reflexively exposed in Chatterton’s revealing his own devices.
Also, I explicated that three contradictory versions of Chatterton’s
death are presented in the novel to extend the problematisation of the
representation of reality. The text provides plausible justifications for each
narrative. Nevertheless, the three narratives are put under erasure, a central
narrative strategy in the novel, leading to the problematisation of their
representationality. Following this section, I delineated Ackroyd’s use of
the technique of mise en abyme as a narrative strategy in problematisation
Conclusion 99
of representation. The symbolic signification of the setting as a narrative

strategy implying similarity and difference was also expounded.
In the second part of Chapter Three, the problematisation of the
representation of reality in literary realism with regard to narrative
techniques and strategies was illustrated. It was expounded that the novel
creates a heterocosm which simultaneously refers to the outside world and
to itself. Then, narrative strategies including mise en abyme, parallelism and
self-reflexivity were delineated. I argued that Philip’s book is a best case of
mise en abyme in the problematisation of representation. As it was
expounded, parallelism instead of narrating based upon chronological order
is used in the novel to problematise the cause-and-effect pattern of literary
realism and historiography. The parallel relations between the three major
characters were also explained. Moreover, literary realism’s reliance upon
the third person omniscient point of view is highly questioned by
Chatterton’s offering multiple points of view which constantly contradict
each other. The delineation on how self-reflexivity challenges the
impersonality and objectivity of literary realism to suggest that meaning is
constructed in the process of writing concluded this chapter.
Chapter Four was dedicated to the novel’s blurring of boundaries.
The problematisation of modernism’s and the avant-garde’s anti-
representationality was first discussed. As declared, the novel is not totally
anti-representational. In effect, it problematises the idea of anti-
representationality as highly supported in modernism, especially by the
avant-garde, by blurring the boundary between reality and art. It is, instead,
both representational and anti-representational. As discussed, the novel’s
conflation of the historical and the fictive through paratexts creates the
problematisation, for it refers to the external reality whilst being still auto-
referential. As opposed to modernism, the novel asserts its possible
referentiality. The portrait suggests the possibility of artistic representationality,
for it is possible to echo and stand for the outside figures as Edward can see.
For Edward, the portrait stands for his father. In addition, the portrait’s
ability to immortalise is an indication of the possibility of artistic
representation. The same idea is pointed out in the discussion between
Meredith and Wallis upon the issue of immortality. It was also demonstrated
that this is in contravention of modernism’s craving for meaninglessness,
for the portrait Wallis is painting does represent somebody. It does have
100 Chapter Five
meaning. Hence, I argued that the novel does not reject the existence of
reality and meaning, but reveals that they are constructed.
In this chapter, I explored how the novel blurs the conventional
boundaries which imply binary oppositions. I expanded upon how
modernist anti-representationality is problematised by demonstrating the
novel’s possibility of representation. I demonstrated that the novel offers the
possibility of artistic representation of reality at the level of structure and
subject matter. The next section was devoted to the novel’s obsession with
meaning as constructed in the process of construction as opposed to literary
realism’s vocation for declaring meaning as a product. I argued that the
novel also challenges modernism and modernist avant-garde’s
meaninglessness of art and the world.
Then, the boundary between originality and copying was discussed.
As Philip observes, stories are limited, but one can say them in different
forms. In effect, putting old things in new ways problematises modernism’s
originality and innovation. I delineated the ways in which the novel was
influenced by other works and is still original. I also discussed that how the
novel’s parodic allusions to and reliance upon, the previous works of arts
question the idea of originality by exposing the style of the artists in the
novel, as well as that of Chatterton and Ackroyd. Blurring the boundaries
between art and criticism was also discussed. It is manifest in the overt
discussions of art and literature amongst the characters. I also pointed out
that boundaries between history and fiction as well as form and content are
blurred in the novel leading to the problematisation of anti-representationality.
In the final section, I examined the idea of meaning as constructed
in the process of narrating as opposed to realism which postulates meaning
as a product. The portrait’s multiplicity of meaning was discussed. The
novel suggests that it takes different meanings through the passage of time.
I also explained how Chatterton’s death as a singular event acquires three
contradictory meanings simultaneously. As mentioned, even as a suicide it
can bear two opposite meanings. Furthermore, the idea of meaning as
constructed in the process of writing is evident in Wallis’s description of his
artwork, Chatterton’s exposition of his fakery in the letter to her mother
discussed in the previous chapter and Merk’s dissection of the portrait.
Therefore, the novel questions realism’s idea that postulates the work of art
Conclusion 101
and its meaning as products by exposing the process through which they are
constructed.
This book brings to light numerous findings and achievements in
the realms of literature and literary criticism. Firstly, the novel makes
references to the outside world whilst aiming at anti-representationality at
the same time. In effect, its referentiality is established through fictive
referents; hence, problematisation, not rejection, of representation and anti-
representation. It questions the representational view of art by self-
reflexively focusing upon its own process of creation. Indeed, realism’s
representational view of art is highly questioned. Furthermore, unlike
modernism and especially the avant-garde which announce the total
separation of the work from the external reality, Chatterton problematises
the view by creating a heterocosm. That is, any reference in the novel to
other works including Eliot’s, to the external reality such as Chatterton’s
life and death and to philosophical and literary theories including Meredith-
Wallis’s discussion of art and mimesis marks the representationality of the
novel. Moreover, contrary to the avant-garde’s notions of originality,
innovation and creativity, the novel highly questions them by making
references to the external reality and copying others’ styles and narrative
strategies to make a new work and to still be creative. Accordingly, the
novel creates a heterocosmic world and is hetero-referential, that is, it is
representational while simultaneously questions its representationality and
aims at self-referentiality.
This can lead to the second significant implication: the
representational and anti-representational views of literature are fallacious.
As the novel reveals, the real/unreal binary opposition as a metaphorical
yardstick for evaluating a work of art is fallacious. In other words, the idea
that reality is an adequate touchstone for art is irrelevant. Therefore, just as
relating the text’s meaning to the author’s intention is false and, as the novel
attempts to point out, to assess or evaluate a work of art by the degree it
represents reality, as in realism, or it breaks away from reality, as in the
avant-garde, is fallacious.
Thirdly, unlike poststructuralism that relates the uncertain state of
affairs in a text to the nature of language–language as inherently unreliable–
the novel as a type of metafiction takes on a deconstructist-formalist
perspective. Chatterton draws upon narrative strategies and techniques for
102 Chapter Five
such hybrid, self-reflexive, self-contradictory and double-edged state of

affairs to indicate the unreliable nature of language. Parody together with
other narrative techniques including paratextuality, under erasure, mise en
abyme and parallelism plays a central role. This marks the difference
between postmodernist metafiction and deconstruction which is discussed
in the next paragraph. Reading is active rather than passive.
The above is closely related to the study’s fourth important finding
which was previously underexplored in postmodern literary scholarship.
Postmodernist historiographic metafiction requires a new poetics that can
account for its mode of representation whose representationality and anti-
representationality are acquired through narrative strategies and techniques.
Far beyond poststructuralists and deconstructists’ linguistic obsessions and
proposed strategy of reading that focuses solely upon the text, historiographic
metafiction draws parallels between the reader, the text and the author. This
is made possible by the self-reflexive and self-conscious conflation of the
historical and the fictive. Consequently, the discussion of reality and
historiography plays an important role which merits a treatment far beyond
deconstruction’s linguistic obsessions. Therefore, in this book I have
applied this new poetics to the novel.
Fifthly, the novel presents reality and meaning as constructs. As
opposed to realism that postulates the existence of reality as transparent, the
novel asserts that reality and meaning are constructed in the process of
creation. Wallis’s description of his techniques used in the portrait, Merk’s
dissection of the portrait and Chatterton’s exposition of his style and method
of writing are indications of metafiction’s emphasis upon the idea that a
work of art is a process and that meaning is constructed in this creative
process. Unlike modernism that nostalgically laments the loss of meaning
and reality, the novel as a historiographic metafiction demonstrates and
corroborates the existence of reality and meaning. However, it exposes that
they are human constructs created in the process of narration by the use of
narrative strategies and techniques. Consequently, the novel is not a final
product but an ongoing process through which meaning is constructed to be
deconstructed.
Closely related to the discussion of reality and meaning is the idea
of history as a construct. As the novel demonstrates, historical facts are
indeed constructed out of historical events. Historiographic metafiction
Conclusion 103
confirms the existence of historical incidents; it, nonetheless, asserts that

historical facts are human constructs. In other words, historiographers give
meaning to an historical incident by the ways through which they narrate it.
This meaning-granting process is highly emphasised in the novel by
offering three different, contradictory versions of a single event: the death
of Thomas Chatterton. That is, a fact is an event plus the meaning we grant
to it by the way it is narrated. Therefore, the idea of history as monolithic,
transparent and homogenous is seriously questioned.
I would like to make some suggestions for scholars of the novel
and students of literature who are interested in further exploring Peter
Ackroyd’s Chatterton. The novel could be analysed in the light of other
literary critical approaches and strategies of reading. Herein, I will refer to
the most applicable literary approaches which are thought to breed results
and shed new light upon the novel. The novel can be read against the death
of the author debate as expressed in Barthes’s “The Death of the Author”
and in Foucault’s “What is an Author.” Death is a leitmotif in the novel and
reflected and prevalent in the life of the major characters, their discussions
and actions. It is also evident in artistic forms including Chatterton’s poetry
and the portrait. The destruction of the portrait can symbolically stand for
the death of the author. On the other hand, the idea of the proprietor of a
work of art as being in control of its meaning is highly questioned in the
novel reflected in the documents and autobiography attributed to Chatterton
and the portrait Wallis paints. It is also manifest in the professional relation
amongst the characters. For instance, Charles is asked to ghost-write Harriet
Scrope. Most of the works of art in the novel which are generally attributed
to certain writers and artists are in fact done by others. The fictional
construction of Barthes’s concept of “modern scriptor,” rather than the
author in whose hands lies the power and meaning, can be explored in this
light.
Next, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism are also fertile
grounds for future literary analyses. Since history and historiography is
central to the novel, one can apply the two approaches. New Historicists and
Cultural Materialists contend that history is not monolithic. Ackroyd’s
novel also suggests this by dismantling Historicist and realist views of
history as coherent, monolithic, unified and chronological. Chatterton
questions the reader’s pre-conceptions about history and the novel’s
104 Chapter Five
constant references to the historical provide grounds for undermining its

artistic autonomy. New Historicists similarly view the work of art as a
discourse, with certain ideologies, which is culturally constructed. In the
vein of the novel, it also brings marginalised voices in history into greater
focus. Therefore, the views can be applicable to the novel.
Moreover, a Foucauldian analysis of the novel is equally
appropriate. Foucault’s idea of power relations can be best applied to the
novel, such as imposing meaning as an act of power. In addition, since
meaning-granting has ideological implications, knowing about the power
structures and how they work in a discourse to produce historical meaning
are required. In this light, Hutcheon’s ideas could highly be illuminating.
Recalling Raymond Williams’ Marxism and Literature, she points out the
new meaning of ideology as a process in which meaning is constructed.
Accordingly, a similar analysis of history and the ways through which
meaning is constructed can be applied to the novel. In addition, the historical
survey of power relations between the text, the reader and the author in
literary criticism reveals the privileging of one at the cost of the suppression
of the two others. On the contrary, the novel aims at making a parallel
relation between them by being both representational and autonomous.
Another approach to the text could be a deconstructist strategy of
reading specifically in terms of semiotics. Study of signs from a
deconstructist angle is applicable to the signs in the novel. For instance, the
portrait and its slippery meanings can be analysed in this light. Moreover,
the leitmotif and the image of death in the novel which acquires different
meanings would be helpful. Since the novel is a postmodernist fiction,
almost all the notions and signs are already self-contradictory and
deconstructed. Consequently, a poststructuralist deconstructist perspective
is applicable.
Moreover, analysing the novel in the light of Marxist and New
Marxist approaches would be tenable. The notion of proprietor as having a
central influence upon the meaning of a work of art is emphasised in the
novel. One can bear in the mind that Chatterton, Charles and Meredith are
all artists suffering from poverty to the brink of committing suicide.
Therefore, the relation between the economic status and death can also be
explored. In addition, scholars could discuss how economic ideology
functions through literary discourse.
Conclusion 105
Also, the application of Reader-Response theory and

Phenomenological approach to the novel could be highly fruitful, for the
novel is a text of, to use Wolfgang Iser’s terms, maximal indeterminacy.
This active role of the reader, or the revival of the reader’s role, in the act
of reading is also pointed out by Hutcheon in Narcissistic Narrative. As
opposed to the passive role of the reader in the realist novel and to
structuralism and poststructuralism’s emphasis upon the text, metafiction
brings readers into a new focus and invites them to be actively involved in
the novel’s process of construction. Creating a high degree of
indeterminacy, the novel provides the reader with stars the constellation of
which can be drawn by the reader. Therefore, Reader-Response theory and
Phenomenological approach can be applicable. However, bringing all the
said approaches into consideration would have been impossible due to the
scope of this study. Consequently, the study has endeavored to best
illuminate significant aspects of the novel, which have been overlooked, that
problematise the ideas of representationality and anti-representationality of
art. It has done so by relying upon postmodern theory which, to the
researcher, is regarded as the best strategy of reading Chatterton with regard
to the idea of the problematisation of the representation of reality in terms
of narrative techniques and strategies.
Finally, I suggest the reading of the novel with a focus upon the
concept of voice and ventriloquism. Readers might be interested in
examination of Chatterton by drawing upon theories in medical humanities
which elucidate. Thomas Chatterton fakes and composes poetry by adopting
the voice and identity of a medieval monk. Charles is a ghost writer who
writes for Harriet. Henry Wallis paints “The Death of Chatterton” (1856) as
an eighteenth-century painter. George Meredith embodies the substantialised
voice of Thomas Chatterton’s death. Given that the major characters in the
novel are imposters, Steven Connor’s works on voice including
Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (2000) could be a starting
point for a better understanding of how writers turn disembodied voices into
palpable characters and a work of art. Also, Patricia Waugh’s “The Art of
Medicine: The Novelist as Voice Hearer” (2015) provides a novel angle in
contemporary literary criticism by bringing the humanities and medicine
together. The contemporary concept of authorship is worth exploration in
further details. As I have put it elsewhere, contemporary authorship
106 Chapter Five
“suggests that the author’s function is complex and dialectical, exercising a

negative capability in externalising the inner voices that are already
internalisations of the afflictions, horrors and traumas of the external world”
(Aryan 2020, 210). In that light, Chatterton can be read against the author’s
ability to embody and characterise the voices of his memory.
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The Postmodern

This book first published 2022

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2022 by Arya Aryan

ISBN (10): 1-5275-8496-8

Preface ...................................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgements ................................................................................. viii

Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 12

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 42

Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 77

Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 97

Bibliography ........................................................................................... 107

In our rapidly digitizing age, we are constantly subjected to multiple

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Sarah Catherine-Ilkhani for her

Recent postmodern literary critics, such as Patricia Waugh and Linda

manipulation of narrative strategies and techniques. That is, I rely upon a

implies the loss of the real as natural. On the contrary, historiographic

representation of reality. As Ackroyd’s Chatterton reveals, postmodernist

possibility of knowing the past. The mode is self-contradictory, paradoxical,

a representative of the outside world. In other words, it is a small world

that self-reflexively echoes and reflects or mirrors itself. In postmodernism,

Moreover, the use of paratextual conventions in historiographic metafiction

to modernism, historiographic metafiction’s conflation of the self-reflexive

blurs the boundary between representational and anti-representational

POSMODERNISM AND THE PROBLEMATISATION

Introduction to Postmodern Theories:

Strikingly enough, the term “postmodern,” when defined, can be misleading

is characterised by a heterogeneity of voices, mass production and popular

addition to contesting language as being able to represent reality,

re-presentation, drawn upon theories put forward by Linda Hutcheon,

The Representation of Reality and its Critique

(Aristotle 7) he consequently postulates the imitative and representational

The Problematisation of the Representation of Reality:

Postmodernist re-presentation cannot be enunciated and discussed in a

them. It makes attempts to de-totalise and “de-naturalize” what we have

Any text that draws the reader’s attention to its process of

real (Hutcheon 1988, viii), be it political, historical or social. Moreover, a

[I]n all fiction, language is representational, but of a fictional

fact is made explicit and, while he reads, the reader lives in a

Put briefly, postmodernism’s self-reflexivity proposes that the work be

keeps the reader in a quandary as to the identification of the work as

be successfully decoded, then, experimental fiction of any variety requires

representing Thomas Chatterton, whilst it formally experiences the

This is what metafictionists aim for. Postmodernist re-presentation obscures

imitates. Therefore, it cannot be anti-mimetic. Parody is discussed in detail

Metafictional texts show that literary fiction can never imitate

Its experimentalism–radical, revolutionary and ahead of its time in

Postmodernist re-presentation does not deny the past; instead, it

Historiographic Metafiction: “Re-presenting”

In its attempt to problematise the representation of reality, metafiction is a

Historiographic metafiction has turned away from the theories and

employed in postmodernist historiographic metafiction to accentuate its

This blurring of historical and literary boundaries also suggests

reaction against modernism’s autonomy (Hutcheon 1988, 88). Modernism

problematisation of such contradictions (Waugh 1986, 6). It is fraught with

used in order to be subverted as a critical commentary upon the objectivity

The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (2022)

The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (2022)

The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (2022)