Heroines of the Postmodern and their Worlds in Contemporary Historical Fiction

Alicja Bemben is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English, the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She is a co-organiser of various academic conferences and events, has co-edited several monographs, and authored a number of texts dealing with historiography (especially in the vein of Hayden White), historical novels (especially by Robert Graves), and their relationships. She cooperates with several journals, is a member of a few societies and research groups, and has coordinated a number of scientific projects.Michael Joseph retired as Rare Books Librarian and Full Professor, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is the author of The Teaching Guide to the Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature (2005), over 65 scholarly texts (articles, book chapters, reviews, etc.) and various novels, books of short stories, and poetry. He is an editor of Handmade Literacies: Special Issue of The Lion and the Unicorn, and the Founding Director of the New Jersey Book Arts Symposium. His recent publications include “Making Video Poems from Poems Made from Diary Entries Made from Dreams” in Book 2.0 (2025, 12 (1–2)), Omni-Puss in Boots (2025), The Marvelous Real in a Land of Dreams (2024), and “Children’s Poetry” in The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature (2023). In 2023, he was asked to participate in a discussion of contemporary children’s poetry, which appears as chapter 29, “Contemporary Children’s Poetry: A Colloquy” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry (2023). Since 2016, he has been the Editor of The Robert Graves Review (formerly Gravesiana).

• List of ContributorsIntroduction: The Golden Age of Historical Fiction: Women’s Fictionalizations of the Historical Past from a Global PerspectiveAlicja Bemben and Michael JosephPart I. 21st-Century HeroinesChapter 1. Representation of the First Turkish Woman Dramatist’s Life on the Stage: Bilgesu Erenus’s The Stigmatised Coffin (Yaftali Tabut)Gülşen SayinChapter 2. Bad Faith and Existential Authenticity in Joanne Joseph’s Children of SugarcaneAlicja BembenChapter 3. Who Holds the Power? Gendered Experiences of Greatness in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the SunAleksandra MzykChapter 4. Feminism Meets Enterprise: Gentleman Jack’s Anne Lister and Her Dual Legacy?Paulina HacaśPart II. Genre Experiments and the Social ChangeChapter 5. Story Writing and Ghost Summoning in Ghada al-Samman’s The Impossible Story and Farewell, DamascusZaina UjayliChapter 6. On the Fringes of Realism. Bizarre World in the Recent Polish Historical FictionDariusz PiechotaChapter 7. “American Poison”: The Buccaneers (2023) and the Open-Ended Potential of Historical RomanceMaria OgórekPart III. (En)Gendering and Sexualising the PastChapter 8. Bring Up the Bodies: Hilary Mantel’s Romancing of HistoryTiziana IngravalloChapter 9. The WoMen of Troy: The Reflection of L’autre Bisexualité in Pat Barker’s Historical Novel, The Women of TroyMerve AltinChapter 10. Fingersmith and the Pornography of the Past that Never WasJustyna JajszczokIndex