Metahistorical Romance is a term describing postmodern historical fiction, defined by Amy J. Elias in Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction. Elias defines metahistorical romance as a form of historical fiction continuing the legacy of historical romance inaugurated by Sir Walter Scott but also having ties to contemporary postmodern historiography. In particular, in metahistorical romance, poststructuralist play invokes the "historical sublime" as defined in the work of Hayden White. Metahistorical romance--such as Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon--attempts to recuperate the sublime untouchability of the past, to reach History and know it, but paradoxically in the context of the political. As with the Kantian sublime, the postmodern historical sublime is not the grasp of the su