SOURCE: "An Approach to the Historical Novel," in The Forms of Historical Fiction: Sir Walter Scott and His Successors, Cornell, 1983, pp. 19-50.

In the excerpt that follows, Shaw argues that a "negative, minimal definition of historical fiction" is necessary in order to accommodate the variety of interpretations regarding the role of history in the historical novel's structure.

When critics discuss literary groups and genres, they are usually doing more than indulging in the pleasures of the taxonomical imagination. Genres help us sense the lay of the literary land. They imply questions and sometimes answers: we see a forest, or at least clumps of trees, instead of trees. In other parts of life, we constantly make distinctions that are like generic distinctions in literary studies, and they matter. As we know, an attempt to correct social injustice may dictate very different actions depending on the groups it singles out...