Lost and Found Relics, Forgeries and Mystifications in 20th Century Historiographic Metafiction

Starting from the assumption that a large number of fictional writings published in the twentieth century foreground such literary  motifs as the lost / found manuscript (sometimes replaced by another similar relic), the present article attempts to highlight the significant subversive potential of postmodern literature,  its  scepticism  regarding the positive sciences’ claim to anchor the discourse in stable representational grounds. My primary textual focus will be on three historiographic metafictions of the ‘80s: Silviu  Angelescu’s  Calpuzanii  [The Forgers], Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot and Milorad Pavić’s lexicon-novel Dictionary of the Khazars, having in common  an undisputable propensity for mystification and fakery.

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