Forging the Past

Authenticity and originality are highly valued artistic and literary concepts, but cultural history is full of fakes, forgeries and scandals. This book discusses if intertextuality and metafiction have made us object less to the literary fake in the postmodern age? Two novels by the British author Peter Ackroyd, The Lambs of London and Chatterton are analysed in depth. The first novel concerns the discovery of a new play by William Shakespeare, if it really is by Shakespeare? The latter is about the mysterious suicide of the poet Chatterton and his literary legacy. To combine these two postmodern novels with the concepts of artistic forgery and originality the book introduces, explains and employs critical terms such as: palimpsest, pastiche, the fake, metafiction, intertextuality, metatextuality, historiographic metafiction and new historicism. Forging the Past is especially useful for students and scholars working with postmodern literature, who may find inspiration in the new approaches to the literary work presented in this book.