This book looks at the representation of historical female scientists' life stories in contemporary biographical novels. It reveals the complex interplay between historical facts and fictional privileges as well as feminist ambitions and popular myths and stereotypes about (these) women in the history of science. A gender-sensitive literary analysis is the methodological approach while recent concepts in biofiction studies form the theoretical foundation.
With a few exceptions, our view of the history of science has often focused solely on great men. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing "rediscovery" of female scientists and their often little-known or forgotten achievements. The present book is dedicated to this current development, also known as "herstory." It shows that the genre of biographical fiction (i.e. the fictionalized representation of a historical person's life) plays an important role in this rewriting that now includes and highlights the perspectives of women. In examining the depiction of female scientists in selected novels and analyzing the ways in which historical fact and fictional privilege intertwine in the portrayal of their biographies, this study reveals the genre's potential for telling women's life stories but also points to the stereotypical images and myths (re-)emerging despite the narratives' avowed revisionist agendas. This book is highly valuable to feminist literary studies and an important addition to the growing field of biofiction scholarship, especially for the connections it draws to the history of science and women's history.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


1 INTRODUCTION: BIOFICTION AND THE HERSTORY OF SCIENCE1
1.1 The Aim and Approach of this Study3
1.2 On the Chosen Text Corpus7
1.3 The State of Research9
1.4 The Structure of this Study12


2 BIOGRAPHICAL FICTION, FEMALE LIFE STORIES, AND FEMINIST EFFORTS IN TELLING HERSTORY18
2.1 Real Lives in Literary Fiction: On the Genre of the Biographical Novel18
2.1.1 Biographical Fiction or Fictional Biography: Terminological Clarifications20
2.1.2 Biofiction as Historical Fiction: An (Un-)Contested Generic Belonging23
2.1.3 Between Fiction and Biography: The Hybrid Nature of Biofiction26
2.1.4 Biofiction as a Postmodern Genre28
2.1.5 Life Writing or Story Telling? Biofiction's Narrative Purpose(s)30
2.1.6 From Minor Genre to Major Literary Form: The Present-Day Rise of Biofiction37
2.1.7 'Appropriation' or 'Silencing': Biofiction and Ethics39
2.1.8 The Famous and the Marginalized: The Preferred Subjects of Biofiction40
2.2 (Re)Imagining HerStory: Female Lives in Biofiction42
2.2.1 The Female Figure in History: A New Literary Presence43
2.2.2 From History to Herstory: A Discursive Shift in Writing the Past45
2.2.3 Women's History and Feminist Biography47
2.2.4 Similar Goals, Different Means: Female Lives in Herstorical Biofiction49
2.2.5 Of Myths and Stereotypes: Herstorical Biofiction's Ambivalen