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Analysis Of Maxine Shore's The Captive Princess

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Historical fictions have become a way for modern readers to connect with a time long since gone, in a format that stirs their passion for the romanticized depictions created on the pages. Hayden White notes that, “historical discourse wages everything on the true, while fictional discourse is interested in the real—which it approaches by way of an effort to fill out the domain of the possible or imaginable” (White 147). This essay will articulate an analysis of the narrative structure of Maxine Shore’s The Captive Princess, along with the character development of the protagonist Princess Gwladys Ruffyd, the antagonist, the Holy Roman Emperor Claudius, and the motivations behind some of their more notable characteristics. There are three basic components to the structure of any narrative; conflict, crisis, and resolution. Brian Upton, author of The Aesthetic of Play, expressed, “A play field structured by the intersection of the reader and the text will inevitably be idiosyncratic and unique” (Upton 239). Meaning every reader draws a different conclusion of what constitutes a major narrative apparatuses of The Captive Princess. The conflict was identified as the moment that the world of nine-year-old Princess Gwladys Ruffyd was changed forever when the Romans attacked her homeland. “The Romans have invaded Britain” (Shore 26). This action by the Romans plunged the royal family and their subjects into a world of uncertainty, tragedy, death, and loss instantaneously while

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