SOURCE: “Historical Subversion and Violence of Representation in García Márquez and Ouologuem,” in Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 107, No. 5, October, 1992, pp. 1235-52.

In the following essay, Aizenberg addresses the differences between actual history and common beliefs, and discusses the concept of embellished history in historical novels by Gabriel García Márquez and Ouologuem.

The rediscovery of history—a recent literary-critical event associated with new historicism, the engagement of the text with the world, and the postmodernist presence of the past—marks a negative response to the older ahistorical, if not antihistorical, bias of literature and criticism, in which formalisms of various kinds ruled the intellectual roost.¹ Of course, the response to the response has been swift and loud; the “rediscovery” of history has given small comfort to the previous roost rulers, who have seen their hallowed objectivities and unities shattered in the name...