Cátedra “Julio Cortázar” 2022: Historical truths, literary truths; presences of the past

Abstract

Historians know today that the knowledge they produce is only one of the modalities of the relationship that societies maintain with the past. Works of fiction, at least some of them, and memory, whether collective or individual, also give a presence to the past, a presence sometimes or often more powerful than the one found in history books. This lecture was dedicated to understanding the relationships between chronicles and plays in Shakespeare's time, between novels and history in the 19th century, between stories of unique lives and historiographical writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. In this way, the lecture presented the relationship and the differences between the enchantments of fiction and the operations of historical knowledge.