Representing Truth Through Narrative : The Use of Historiographical Techniques in Creative Non-Fiction

Sammanfattning: This essay is an attempt to show how certain elements, or techniques of history writing, can be used in creative non-fiction. It uses three major sources of theory. First, there is Charlotte Canning and Thomas Postlewait’s view on “the five themes of historiography,” which are indispensable for researching history: time, space, archive, identity, and narrative. The essay primarily focuses on narrative, because it is connected to representations of human lives, and as such contributes to meaning- creation. Second, the essay employs Hayden White’s concept of the historian’s working process and the notions of chronicle, story, mode of emplotment, mode of argument and ideological implications. Third is the method developed by Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke of the five C’s of historical thinking: change over time, causality, context, complexity and contingency. Although these are separate theories, the essay shows how they can be complementary and help in the development of memoir writing, which is here my creative work, A Family Memoir in Essays, in particular the essays entitled “Trimdiniekis,” “Brasiliana,” and “A Sertaneja”.