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Well, sir, I almost give up … but what is the point of any story, if not to teach us how our forefathers goofed. So, what is wrong with pieces like Herbert's “Dune”? as an educational study of our past and probable future? Rah, rah! Let historical and science fiction be an important part of reading lists for our young pups, if only in hopes that one of them will get it right in the future.
'Dune' has its moments and might perhaps give some notion of the 'language of swords' Islam once was, though what 'House Atreides' is doing in there Herbert alone knows. The average production of science fantasy – which is what predominates nowadays – merely indicates, however, how little grasp modern people have of myth, folk-story, saga or whatever they suppose themselves to be imitating and just vulgarise the past (and I'll trail my coat and include Tolkein, what's more). The historical fiction I can bear to read tends to be written by persons with considerable historical knowledge about periods of the past of which I am passably ignorant, I find. I think I know enough, though, to have some sense of when they 'get it right'.
I think the post Civil War Realists wrote some very good historical fiction. Authors like Twain, Alcott, or Howells I think got the real feeling and sense of their time periods, and even though the stories were fiction it was a depiction of real people and what they did and were going through and what they thought in their everyday lives.
I think the post Civil War Realists wrote some very good historical fiction. Authors like Twain, Alcott, or Howells I think got the real feeling and sense of their time periods, and even though the stories were fiction it was a depiction of real people and what they did and were going through and what they thought in their everyday lives.
Fiction of the past can often be fine unless huge changes happen to distort memory (the reason I quoted 'Dr Zhivago'), and I agree with you about the above. In my local library 'historical fiction' means something like 'books written fairly recently to picture the more distant past'. I like Scott when he's writing about Scottish history, even if he's wrong on the detail, because he understands the national development embodied, whereas his English history seems just constume drama. 'War and Peace' is great, because ambitious to understand. The average bodice-ripper – very popular over here – is, however, just soft porn from which we can learn nothing. I am beginning to realize what an enormous subject we have got ourselves into here!
For every person who gets it right there will be ten who will think He got it wrong.
I think someone drilled a tiny hole in your water glass – everytime you raise it drink, it will run down your chin. 🙂
Am I wrong? Take all the great heros you can think of and you will find large groups of detractors. From God himself all the way down they will critisize. With alot of people no one can do anything right.
An article was published in the Guardian on the way historical fiction plays with the truth. As it says, liberties must really be taken in historical fiction:
There is an inherent tension between trying to do something new and something old at the same time. One cannot have medieval characters using correct period language because no one would find the speech readable. Similarly, an accurate portrayal of a world in which most dutiful and conscientious fathers will regularly beat their sons is likely to alienate readers.
Yet at the same time, there are those errors which are simply loopy, which go on to teach bad history which is then absorbed by an audience:
…at the end of Braveheart, where it is suggested that the future Edward III (born in 1312) was the product of a union between the Scottish rebel William Wallace (executed in London in 1305) and Princess Isabella of France, who was nine at the time of Wallace's death. It would be funny ? if I had not met so many people who believed it.
I enjoy historical fiction the most when it is interesting minor events set in a point in time that has accurate portrayals of the culture where it takes place. I am less enamored with enbellishments of well known events. The latter ones can confuse me by introducing fictional elements into something I had only facts about before, if that makes any sense. Mel Gibson has conned me into thinking that Robert the Bruce was a traitor at some point. I much prefer to read about Owen Archer solving mysteries in York (although the author, Candace Robb, does tend to get a little bogged down some times) and learn a lot about daily life in a medieval city that is accurate. I also must confess to browsing the shelves in the “Young Adult” section and I enjoy Michael Cadnum's books (though it looks like his latest might be in the first category I mentioned). He has some on young knights and squires that went to and from England and the crusades that are pretty good IMO. Besides what seems an accurate portrayal of daily life, he also has a nice technique of repeating just a word or phrase used in dialog in Middle English. In other words, the dialog will appear in modern English and following it will be an italicized fragment in Middle English.
True historical fiction, not romance or alternitive crap, and inspire those who love history to research further as happened to me from childhood when I read or saw historical films.Therefore — Shameless self promotion —My novel Rocamora fills in the historically exceptional sketchy life of Vicente de Rocamora (1601-83), royal confessor and spiritual director for the teenage Infanta of Spain, sister of Philip IV, and mother of all future Habsburg rulers, when he was only five years older than she in an era before the confessional booth.Spanish saying: No man is closer to a woman, not her father, not her brother, not her husband.”Rocamora disappears from Court in 1643 when Olivares falls from power, goes to Amsterdam where he declares himself to be a Jew, circumcises himself, and takes the name Isaac, after which he goes to medical school, receives his license to practice at age 46 and marries at age 46 a 25 year old who gives him 9 children in the next 11 years.How tumescent and randy a confessor he must have been.My research, not generally mentioned, uncovered Rocamora was a freethinker and connected to the titled de Rocamoras of Rafal, Benferri, and Granja de Rocamora. They originated from Roquemaure on the Rhone, and their ancestor, the Sieur de Roquemaure, was a nephew of Louis VIII.Of course, I added roance, swordplay, and court intrigues against a background of fear of the Inquisition.
Your reply made me think of a better way to summarize my thoughts…I like historical fiction to augment my research, not invalidate it.
If anything, my stance about historical fiction has hardened since this thread was started. Historical and fiction are two words that together are a misnomer in the same vein as military intelligence. There is nothing historical but plenty of fiction in historical fiction. It is right up there with alternate history in my book. I neither like nor read either anymore though I sadly admit that I read both during my misspent youth.
