LTLaiškas istoriniame romane galėtų būti priskiriamas slaptai (dažniausiai – fikcinei) subjektyvistinei istoriografijai. Labai svarbi ir savo raiška komplikuota yra laiško kaip tekstinės nuorodos funkcija istoriniame romane: laiške lengva suderinti realius ir fiktyvius dalykus, bet sunku juos atpažinti / atskirti. Laiškui būdingos įvairaus pobūdžio klastotės: adresanto, turinio, adresato. Iš šiuolaikinio romano – istoriografinės metafikcijos – keleto referencinio modelio nuorodų tipų laiškas sietinas su dvejomis: tekstualizuota ekstratekstine ir hermeneutine. Pirmuoju atveju remiamasi empirine realybe, arba, anot Rimanto Glinskio, „faktiškuoju dėmeniu“ (Glinskis, 2006, 33), o antruoju pabrėžiamos fiktyvaus laiško turinio sąsajos su realia skaitytojo patirtimi, arba „prisipažinimų, jausmų atskleidimu“, taigi emociniu-prasminiu dėmeniu. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Hermeneutinė nuoroda; Laiškas-autonomiškas diskursas kūrinyje; Laiškas-tekstinė nuoroda; Laiškas-įterptos naracijos elementas; Tekstualizuota ekstratekstinė nuoroda; Hermeneutical reference; Letter-text reference; Textualized extratextual reference; The letter as the autonomous discourse in the entire work; The letter – an element of embedded narration; The letter–an element of embedded narration.
ENA letter in a historical novel can be classified as a secret (usually – fictional) subjective historiography. In a historical novel, the function of a letter as a textual reference is very important and challenging due to its expression: it is easy to combine real and fictional things in a letter, but it is difficult to identify / separate them. The different types of forgeries are characteristic of a letter: addresser, content, addressee. A letter should be associated with two types of references of the referential model of a novel as the historiographic metafiction: textualized extratextual and hermeneutical. The article summarizes the cases of letters found in selected texts of Lithuanian and Finnish contemporary historical novels and raises the question as to whether they really function only as two of the references mentioned above. Analysis of the cases of the usage of letters in the selected novels (Vytautas Martinkus’s "Žemaičio garlėkys" (2009) and Sofi Oksanen‘s "When the Pigeons Disappeared" (2013)) showed that the status of a letter in historical novels depends on the position of the narrator. In the first case, we have protagonists who are allowed to speak directly, so we can see their letters as an independent part of the entire novel. In the second case, the narrator is omniscient and we cannot enjoy reading the included letters. They seem to be secret, i.e. a space is left for the readers to imagine their content. [From the publication]