Re-reading World History through an “all-seeing eye”: Cultural relativism in Gore Vidal’s Creation
Keywords:
Gore Vidal, Creation, cultural relativism, literary analysis, historical fiction, Persian literatureAbstract
This article analyzes Gore Vidal's novel Creation (1981) as a significant literary work that has been overlooked by critics. The study argues that Creation deserves attention not only for its comparative religious content but also for its literary merit, particularly its exploration of the bipolar motif of insight/blindness through the character Cyrus Spitama. The paper explores Vidal's intention to restore history to literature and his application of Hermann Broch’s vision of history as an experiment to unify past cultures with American culture. This work investigates Creation's placement within two literary traditions: a renewed American interest in Persian fiction and the concept of cultural relativism, influenced by anthropologist Franz Boas. The author contends that Vidal uses historical Greek figures like Protagoras and Herodotus to critique ethnocentrism and promote a non-discriminating worldview. This article demonstrates how Creation serves as a panoramic novel that transcends simple historical retelling, offering a nuanced perspective on cultural relativism.
(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.)
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