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Research Article

No. 10 (2026): Open Issue

Fictionalizing History: Hilary Mantel’s New Historicist and Postmodern Reimagining of English National Narratives

DOI
https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1934212
Submitted
31.01.2026
Published
22.04.2026

Abstract

This article examines Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy (Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light) through the theoretical framework of new historicism and postmodern historiography. Drawing on the ideas of Stephen Greenblatt, Michel Foucault, Linda Hutcheon, and other cultural theorists, the study argues that Mantel’s historical fiction systematically challenges the authority of archival history, the notion of objective truth, and the singularity of historical narrative. The trilogy exposes history as a constructed, ideologically mediated discourse shaped by power, institutional interests, and narrative selection. Through its skeptical treatment of historical records, its emphasis on rumor, forgery, and apocryphal history, and its reimagining of key Tudor figures, most notably Thomas Cromwell, Mantel’s fiction exemplifies historiographic metafiction and a distinctly new historicist sensibility. By destabilizing national myths, questioning religious and political historiography, and foregrounding the imaginative reconstruction of the past, the Wolf Hall trilogy redefines the relationship between history and literature. The article concludes that Mantel’s work not only revises English history, specifically Tudor history, but also invites readers to reconsider how historical knowledge itself is produced, transmitted, and contested.

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