Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton: History as Taxidermy

Year 2009, Volume: 12 Issue: 2, 19 - 30, 01.04.2009

Zekiye Antakyalıoğlu

Abstract

The new historicist understanding of approaching the factual as fictional may stem from the awareness
that every historian tends to give to real events the form of a story while emplotting their narratives. In this
respect history has affinity with taxidermy which, as an image, serves well for understanding how a historian
works. For the historian stuffs the events that happened in the past by the archival research, second hand
information, other texts and other points of view, and represents them in a way much similar to a taxidermist.
He exhibits the past with new stuff, and it works, because the dead cannot speak. Peter Ackroyd examines
history in Chatterton as taxidermy, as an art of stuffing, and mounting the skins of dead animals for exhibition
in a lifelike state, and skillfully applies his historical knowledge in creating a fictional version of Thomas
Chatterton’s life. This paper is an attempt to analyse how history can be perceived as taxidermy, and discuss
how Ackroyd’s Chatterton attaches an artistic and aesthetic dimension to it.

Keywords

Historification, Biography, Postmodern, Chatterton

Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton: History as Taxidermy

Abstract

Gerçekliğe kurmaca olarak yaklaşan yeni tarihselci anlayış tüm tarihçilerin kitap yazarken geçmişi hikâye anlatısı formuna sokup ona bir olay örgüsü verme gayreti içine girdikleri saptamasından doğar. Bu bağlamda tarihçiliğin taksidermi (hayvan postunu doldurarak onu canlı gibi teşhir etme sanatı) ile bir benzerliği vardır. Taksidermi tarihçinin geçmişe nasıl şekil verdiğini anlamak için güçlü bir imgedir. Zira tarihçi geçmişte olan olayların içini arşiv çalışmalarıyla, ikinci el bilgilerle, diğer metin ve bakış açılarından öğrendikleriyle doldurur ve onları bir taksidermist gibi bize sunar. Bunu yapmak da kolaydır, çünkü ölüler konuşamaz. Peter Ackroyd Chatterton adlı romanında tarihe taksidermi olarak yaklaşır ve romantik dönem şairlerinden Thomas Chatterton’un hayatının bize kurgusal bir alternatifini sunar. Bu çalışma Ackroyd’un Chatterton adlı eserini tarih, kurgu ve taksidermi kavramları bakımından analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır.

Keywords

Tarihselcilik, Biyografi, Post modern, Chatterton

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