Anachronism and historical discourse

Abstract

Heterochrony, essentially proper to every event or literary text, is highlighted in historical novels by special fgures of anachronism. The present article draws distinctions between three such fgures: metaphoric anachronism (the past is assimilated to the present, sometimes as an instructive example), metonymic anachronism (the events of the past anticipate other events taking place later as their consequences), and metaleptic anachronism (people of the past are endowed with ideas of our time, and people of the present passionately drawn to the past).