Agents of history: between eccentric and paranoid

Abstract

This article debates about the role of the writer and its relation with history which has been shown in every document and file so it will warn on the ways on how the work of literature evolves in the midst of the complex discussion between fiction and truth. It also pretends for the Spanish and Literature future graduate students to make a possible to develop proposal for the analysis of the narrative against the discourse of history, in the teaching practice. From this problematic state, the pretension is to relate the role of the writer with the role of the historian more than underlining the distances to explore those aspects linking both as historical individuals with an urge to know the world through the discourse under a series of ethical and moral assumptions that accompany every intellectual work. To display that knowledge of the world, the writer creates personages who often become metaphors of the profound relation instituted with the historical reality. Therefore, in the works of fiction and nonfiction we contemplate characters that make research, compare documentation and hypothesized like historians do. This is the case of Javier the researcher in “Soldados de Salaminaâ€. It´s also the case of Tomas Eloy in the novel “Santa Evitaâ€, or Emilio Renzi in “Respiracion Artificialâ€, and, of course, the outcast Gould in “El Secreto de Joe Gouldâ€. History as a narrative, truth as a version, and research as a narrative procedure and eccentricity as a lifestyle are some of the reasons to encourage a critical position towards the relation between history and fiction in the environment of discursive representations.