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The René Wellek Prize Citation 1986

Suzanne Gearhart, The Open Boundary of History and Fiction (Princeton UP, 1985)

The Prize Committee of the American Comparative Literature Association is pleased to present the 1986 René Wellek Prize for a study in literary theory to Suzanne Gearhart for The Open Boundary of History and Fiction. Professor Gearhart explores in a rich and illuminating way some of the essential tensions in the relations of history and fiction, comparing modern and contemporary views on these issues with earlier views in the French Enlightenment. In so doing she establishes an intricate interplay between those modes of writing, putting the necessary qualifications into our demarcations of these genres. The result is a salutary rethinking of questions which are especially significant to theorists of interdisciplinary studies. It is an important book for comparatists