Gore Vidal’s Washington, D.C. and The Golden Age
Keywords:
Gore Vidal, Narratives of Empire, historiographic metafiction, intertextuality, Washington D.C., The Golden AgeAbstract
This article analyzes Gore Vidal’s Washington, D.C. (1967) and The Golden Age (2000), two novels that form part of Vidal’s Narratives of Empire series. The study examines the intricate relationship between these two works, which both narrate the same historical period but from different perspectives. The paper argues that The Golden Age rewrites and recontextualizes Washington, D.C., thereby altering its reception and interpretation. By exploring intertextual connections and historiographic metafiction, this work investigates how Vidal integrates Washington, D.C. into the broader Narratives of Empire. The author contends that evaluating these novels as historiographic metafictions rather than historical novels provides a more nuanced understanding of their literary and historical significance.
(The abstract and keywords were prepared retrospectively for indexing purposes using AI-assisted tools and editorial review, based on the original article. They did not appear in the original publication.)
References
Baker, Susan and Curtis S. Gibson, eds. Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. Print.
Barthes, Roland. “Theory of the Text.” Untying the Text. Ed. Robert Young. London: Routledge, 1990. 31-47. Print.
Fleishman, Avrom. The English Historical Novel: Walter Scott to Virginia Woolf. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1971. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
Kloman, Harry. “Gore Vidal’s American Chronicles: 1967-2000.” 2005. Web. 8 Aug. 2012.
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Print.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 1979. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. Print.
Orel, Harold. The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini: Changing Attitudes toward a Literary Genre, 1814-1920. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. Print.
Vidal, Gore. Burr. 1973. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
---. 1876: A Novel. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
---. Empire: A Novel. 1987. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
---. The Golden Age. New York: Vintage International, 2001. Print.
---. Hollywood. 1990. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
---. Lincoln. New York: Random House, 1984. Print.
---. Washington, D.C. 1967. New York: Vintage International, 2000. Print.
Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: Methuen, 1984. Print.
