Historical fiction: From historical accuracy to prosthetic memory

Abstract

In this article, I contribute to the discussion on the cognitive value of contemporary historical fiction as a means of understanding the past. Although such means typically come from the field of history and philosophy of history, and historical accuracy seems to be the most important means, this work is concerned with historical fiction being an inspiration for an auxiliary means of the sort. Drawing on Alison Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory, I propose the concept of prosthetic past. In order to elaborate on the idea with an illustrative example, I use Katherine Reay’s The London house (2021)—a work of historical fiction that explicitly engages with the issue of historical accuracy. With regard to this, I structure the article as follows: the text opens with a broad-brush discussion of the development of the idea of understanding the past in the field of academic history and mainstream historical fiction. In the next part, I capitalise on Landsberg’s prosthetic memory to give grounds to my idea of prosthetic past and refer to The London house as an example with which to elaborate on it. Subsequently, I propose a tripartite discussion of the concept-cum-novel to explicate the idea of prosthetic past. The article closes with my consideration of two implications of the presented findings.