Published Online:March 2025
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES130325
DOI:10.71329/IUPJES/2025.20.1.156-161
Author Name:Anu S
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:156-161
Narratives on history are constructed by a selective interpretation of the data, collected by the writer. The choice of a structure that makes the facts intelligible determines the course of the narrative. The agents and events of the past are mapped based on the writer’s understanding of their significance and relevance to the main narrative. William Dalrymple’s book The Anarchy is based on the corporate violence of the East India Company. The narrative links the fate of the Company to the global economic tendencies of the present. So the narrative is woven by the writer to interpret the past as an antecedent to the present. The interpretation of past as a moral guide for the present also situates the present as the reenactment of the past. The methodology applied by each writer of history differs on the basis of his preference of subject for the narrative. This paper examines how the narrative interprets the past by framing historical events through the lens of present-day realities that are familiar to its readers. The crafting of a narrative on such lines increases the scope of consumption of history.
In a narrative on history, the past becomes historical under the imperatives of the present. Historical accounts are inextricably linked to social realities by the historian’s conception of a crisis