Metalepsis kerrontastrategiana Lars Sundin historiallisissa romaaneissa

• Marita Hietasaari Ylivieskan kaupunginkirjasto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74690

Abstract

Metalepsis as a narrative strategy in Lars Sund’s historical novels

Lars Sund’s historical novels Colorado Avenue (1991), Lanthandlerskans son (1997) and Eriks bok (2003) deal with the history of Finland from the end of the 19th century to the 1950s. The narrator Carl-Johan Holm investigates his own family history with somewhat exceptional methods: he travels in time and space to interview his already deceased relatives. The narrator’s actions cause the merging of the narrative levels, the time of the narrating and the time of the narrated. Gerald Genette (1990) used term metalepsis (originally a rhetorical term, which indicated a type of metonymy) to describe this kind of crossing of narrative boundaries.

According to Genette, metalepsis’ influence is mainly comical or fantastic. This applies to the Sund’s novels as well: the narrator’s great grandmother scolds him for giving her such a miserable life and chases him out of her shop with a broom. In Eriks bok the departed residents of the community gather around the narrator while he is trying to finnish the story, to help the narrator or rather to argue with him about the events of the war. These encounters also bring a metafictive aspect to the novels. But not all the metaleptic crossings are comical or fantastic. In Colorado Avenue during the civil war of 1918 Erik meets general Mannerheim in a dream. The general makes him see the discrepancy between his idealistic views of the war and the reality. The effect is shattering.

As a narrative method metalepsis unites two different time levels: the frame story allows the narrator to assess the past events of the embedded stories from the perspective of the narration time. The narrator scrutinizes diarys, newspapers, investigation documents and photographs, but despite strenuous enquiries he draws wrong conclusions – to get hold of the past seems impossible. Like many other postmodern historical novels Lars Sund’s novels call into question the conventions of historical narrative and they look at history critically and with a reassessment.