“It’s only a story”

Abstract

This chapter asks the question whether explicitly fictional literary texts, by contrast with others discussed in this volume such as memoir and autobiography, are ever of value as historical sources. It aims to furnish the scholar of history with an understanding of the novelistic genre and with the necessary tools for a critical approach to the perspective on history offered by novels. The chapter will be informed by the theories of Michel Foucault concerning the construction of narratives in both history and literature, and will focus on the key issues of audience and reception.My context will be nineteenth-century Russia, when the novel became the dominant literary genre and realism the leading aesthetic category. At a time when literature was the main outlet for engaging with the social issues of the day and when critics hotly debated the role of imaginative literature in society, the example of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is an interesting case in point. The chapter will consider the controversial eighth and final part of the novel, set after the death of the main protagonist, and which refers to the Balkan conflict leading to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. Via an analysis of Tolstoy’s portrayal of the subject and of his intended audience, and an examination of the reception of this instalment of the novel, including responses from journal editors and other prominent literary figures, I will demonstrate what the reader can learn from the novel about contemporary attitudes to this conflict.