FORGERIES, FALSEHOODS AND FIGURATIONS: READING TRUTH(S) IN PETER ACKROYD’S CHATTERTON
FORGERIES, FALSEHOODS AND FIGURATIONS: READING TRUTH(S) IN PETER ACKROYD’S CHATTERTON

Summary/Abstract: Truth, always the embattled realm, is at the core of Ackroydian novels. Its nuances and delineations, its vagaries and fluctuations, make up the crux of Chatterton (1987), a novel which proposes a motley, synoptic construction of truth.Deeply tied with issues of self and self-effacement, it is a destabilizing force,engendering anxiety through its frightening potential, creating a space that negates identity. Under constant threat of rewriting, the self becomes a matter of caprice,seeking footholds in notions of originality and forgery, in obsessions with roots and root causes, to provide a second, more reliable Truth, free from the confines of ambiguity. This is a hermeneutic effort par excellence, in that it enforces a frantic reinterpretation of the past and its artifacts: whether through poet Chatterton or novelist Scrope, ruminations on plagiarism and literary influence suffuse the text,never affording a clear-cut conclusion, offering mere hints in tantalizing directions.My paper will investigate these places of lived tension through the lens of hermeneutic theories, as provided by Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Merold Westphal, David Couzens Hoy, and others, in order to shed light on the precarious interplay of truth and falsehood, and their configurations within the novel.

• Details
• Contents