The Representations of History through Fiction: Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo and Victoria Hislop’s Those Who Are Loved

In this thesis, Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) and Victoria Hislop’s Those Who Are Loved (2019) are studied from a New Historicist approach. The thesis starts with an introduction that briefly studies the representations of historical events in historical accounts. It also includes a comparison between Old Historicism and New Historicism.

Additionally, the major arguments of New Historicism are applied such as “the textuality of history,” “the historicity of texts,” the relationship between the texts and the cultural and biographical backgrounds of the authors.

“Subversion” and its “containment,” and other arguments are discussed. The different types of historical novels and their qualities are mentioned. The introduction is finalized with information about the writers’ backgrounds, the time of writing, and their connections to Syria and Greece as British authors.

This thesis aims at analysing the novels from a New Historical perspective as a contribution to the studies that aim to reveal the differences between representing historical events in historical fiction on the one hand and the representations of the same events in typical historical accounts on the other.