O ROMANCE HISTÓRICO E A PROBLEMÁTICA DO DISTANCIAMENTO TEMPORAL ENTRE O FATO NARRADO E O PERÍODO DE VIDA DO AUTOR

The article discusses the great controversy over the time gap between the narrated fact and the author’s life period in the concept of the historical romance. For many literary critics, perhaps most of them, it is necessary that the action of the novel, or at least most of it, happens in a period of time before the lifetime of the novelist, and for others, this criteria is too rigid and outdated. Therefore and taking into consideration that George Lukacs, the first theorist of historical novel, placed Balzac in the group of novelists as one of the followers of Walter Scott’s techniques, stating that the French novelist “created a superior type and so far unknown historical novel, which is a representation of this as history, this article presents a reflection on the controversy, checking whether there is really need that the temporal distance has a greater relevance than the dialogue with history and its representation in the characterization of a historical novel.