Biofiction and History: A Comparative Reading of the Lives of Captain Cook, Sultan Selim III, and Kuchuk Huseyin Pasha

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Gönül Bakay

Published:

2024

Publisher:

IntechOpen

Biofiction is a hybrid literary genre that appropriates historical lives and molds them into the subject of fiction; it uses historical characters rather than representing them. This literary genre, which has stimulated a vast array of reactions over the past few decades, is not a branch of history or biography. Anna Enquist’s 2005 novel The Homecoming is a successful example of biofiction that revolves around the illustrious life of Thomas Cook but tells the story from the perspective of his wife Elizabeth Cook. Through the reconstructed voices of these historical figures, the reader is offered alternative perspectives into their lives as well as into the British Empire in the eighteenth century. Stanford Shaw’s critically acclaimed Between Old and New (1971), on the other hand, is a history book that aims to offer a factual representation of the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire, particularly the reign of Sultan Selim III. This chapter aims to examine the interesting parallels and differences in the lives of these historical figures as depicted in a work of biofiction and a history book and show how differences in genre implicate the portrayal of historical figures.

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