Date of Award
2002
Degree Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Celest Martin
Abstract
One of the hallmarks of historical nonfiction is its purported allegiance to truth. But what is historical truth? Prevalent narratives and characterizations of events and individuals? What if research uncovers primary sources that contradict each other? How does one determine the "truth"? I explore these issues by writing my own carefully researched nonfiction novel about a Porfirian family, the Enrique Zepedas, and analyzing it in terms of three intersecting fields: historiography, nonfiction narrative, and rhetoric, to illustrate the centrality of language in conceptions of reality. This study is above all a rhetorical one. Zepeda was a prominent Mexican who conspired and aided in the overthrow of President Madero during the violent period known as la Decena Trágica --the Tragic Ten Days. He conspired with General Félix DÃaz, General Victoriano Huerta, and American Ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson. This project examines how twenty-six writers and the Mexico City press of two military regimes have represented Zepeda. It argues that the version that persists in contemporary historiography is the version fed to the press of 1913 and 1914 by oppressive regimes. Thus it issues a caveat against the unexamined reliance on materials simply on the merit that they are primary. My project corrects the historical record through my translation of neglected sources and by adding the testimony of women and children whose versions of the Revolution challenge the dominant revolutionary ethos. Part One lays the theoretical groundwork by examining the traditional dichotomization of rhetoric and poetics as challenged by historian Hayden White and by literary theorists Ross Winterowd, John Lehman and others. It theorizes the difference between the historical novel and the historical nonfiction novel in terms of degrees of fact and fictionality, with special emphasis on the reader-writer contract. And it contextualizes Mexico's Revolution of 1910 and its Counter-Revolution of February 1913, calling upon a re-visioning of those two critical experiences. Part Two consists of an historical nonfiction novel in nine chapters. Part Three analyzes sources and the writer's conscious shifts between verifiable fact, family lore, assumption, and fiction. Such an analysis focuses on the intersection of historiography, rhetoric and narrative nonfiction.
Recommended Citation
Shaw, Sylvia Montgomery, "Ghosts at the table: Historiography and nonfiction narrative as rhetorical constructs of the Mexican Counter-Revolution of 1913" (2002). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 1829.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/1829
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