Super-Realism in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf-Hall Trilogy

Abstract

The term ‘Super-realism’, coined by a British American visual artist, a painter named, Malcolm-Morley in 1970s to connote it as photo-realism. This term shows similarity to some extent with the French philosopher, post-structuralism critic, and sociologist, Jean Baudrillard’s term ‘Hyper-reality’. About this he has written that hyper-reality is not about the outcome, but it is about the process, which makes a text hyper-real or super-real. By saying this Baudrillard was more interested in the process of how a particular incident happened, and not in what happened. Polish-french art critic and writer, Guillame Apollinaire, who fathered the term, ‘cubism’ and is fondly called the forefather of the term, ‘surrealism’. He was of the view to breaking the reality into various perspectives to look at. Andre Breton in his, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ has discussed the Freudian psychology and working of the sub-conscious and unconscious mind to narrate a story in such a way that creates super-realism, a kind of realism which was created by Tolstoy in his ‘Crime and Punishment’. This is the point where dreams and reality lose their boundaries and they both coalesce to form super-realism. The present Paper seeks to analyze the Elements of Super-Realism in the Wolf-Hall Trilogy, written by celebrated author Hilary mantel who has been awarded Booker Prize twice for the first two novels of this trilogy. The Wolf-Hall Trilogy is a Series of Historical novel. It delves into the time of King Henry VIII. Narration is in third person. Whole Story is described from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, chief advisor of King Henry.