tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post4353520616036640734..comments2024-03-23T12:38:46.260+00:00Comments on The History Girls: Is the historical novel the ultimate novel? - Emma DarwinMary Hoffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06241989732624913706noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-12611279870360590382011-08-24T00:01:57.332+01:002011-08-24T00:01:57.332+01:00As a writer interested in the ancient world (Rome ...As a writer interested in the ancient world (Rome particularly), I suspect my attempts to climb into the skin of a character from that milieu may possibly be delusional? Coupled with my innate desire to express a contemporary relevance to ancient goings-on, it's possible this double-thrust bypasses the lived economic, social, & existential stresses of the era & casts a modernising patina over the entire scenario? Nevertheless, in my opus "THE HADRIAN ENIGMA: A Forbidden History", set in Imperial Roman times, I tried to capture the almost-alien or dystopian cultural & sexual environments which prevailed in that pre-Christian era (at least in my mind, based on reasonable research). Only an impartial reader of the paperback or Kindle could assess my actual success in this endeavor.George Gardinerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13155595304649065836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-37898307373340382282011-08-23T05:04:04.857+01:002011-08-23T05:04:04.857+01:00Wonderful piece. I think historical fiction is so ...Wonderful piece. I think historical fiction is so much fun because people in the past had the same human feelings we have and so are just like us. Yet they saw the world through the culture of their time, which could involve actions horrible and bizarre by our standards, and so they nearly alien to us. This same/alien dichotomy makes historical fiction a true journey. <br /><br />"No writer now setting a novel in the mid-eighteenth century is seriously trying to convince the reader that it's a long-lost manuscript..." Um, er, that's exactly what I've done with my mid-eighteenth century book George in London (http://t.co/nSTf3x6). How did Emma Darwin know? ;-)timqueeneyhttp://www.timqueeney.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-49762224640041753622011-08-22T21:05:32.769+01:002011-08-22T21:05:32.769+01:00Thanks for using the time and effort to write some...Thanks for using the time and effort to write something so interesting. <br /> <br />My site: <br />credit maison <a href="http://www.rachatdecredit.net" rel="nofollow">www.rachatdecredit.net</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-44043765097376409402011-08-22T20:47:55.959+01:002011-08-22T20:47:55.959+01:00This post expresses elegantly and clearly so much ...This post expresses elegantly and clearly so much that I have muzzily thought, but never sorted out sufficiently in my head - thank you for doing it for me! I find it very interesting that many histfic writers - myself included -feel the need (or are challenged) to justify themselves in terms of their historical accuracy (...how many posts on this site have pointed out 'I'm not a historian, but...', almost perhaps anticipating an attack). Of course accuracy is important to us - that has been discussed so well in previous posts - but what interests me is the assumption that we ought somehow to do everything that a nonfiction historian does (and more - make it a novel), when in fact we are doing something different and/but every bit as valid? I realise I'm relieved to hear you say 'No writer now setting a novel in the mid-eighteenth century is seriously trying to convince the reader that it's a long-lost manuscript...'. No - precisely because of this dance that histfic does betw the past and the modern reader, precisely because histfic illuminates the present as well as the past... as does nonfiction history in its angle or preoccupations. Historians may be challenged on that score (how often, I wonder?) but their whole discipline is not disparaged because of it.H.M. Castorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08716936870601385683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-58972525718134444092011-08-22T18:47:59.638+01:002011-08-22T18:47:59.638+01:00Fiction set in the present isn't truthful to t...Fiction set in the present isn't truthful to the 'now' either. That's why it's fiction. I've never heard a critic complain about the non-existence of, say, a President Jack Ryan--but get a couple of Doges out of order and they're all over you!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12397530477434680079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-84702137408030476022011-08-22T16:44:10.683+01:002011-08-22T16:44:10.683+01:00Quite fascinating, Emma! Will now have to go back ...Quite fascinating, Emma! Will now have to go back and re read. Lots to think about here!adelehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15826710558292792068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-74390565378340877742011-08-22T13:44:22.526+01:002011-08-22T13:44:22.526+01:00Beautifully said! I love this about writing histo...Beautifully said! I love this about writing historical fiction. I don't have to choose between being a historian or a novelist. I can do the things I enjoy most from each.<br /><br />And I can agree with the assumption that the distance of history allows us to see the broader themes. When reading a historical novel, it is always the universality that strikes me. The fact that the same limitations, desires, failings, exist not only across place but also across time.Jessica Brockmolehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05333664969192588015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-36238546117579157252011-08-22T12:03:57.127+01:002011-08-22T12:03:57.127+01:00I’m interested in adaptation studies - which I onl...I’m interested in adaptation studies - which I only mention because some of its most interesting debates arise from how it falls between two stools. It’s not film studies and it’s not literature studies but neither and both at the same time. Similarly, as your great post demonstrates, when you write historical fiction you are very conscious of being a hybrid creature – not an historian but not a ‘straight’ novelist either. You have to do this ‘waltz between the possible and the probable’. It’s also a two-edged sword: on the one side it’s a fascinating area of literature to work in; on the other you sometimes feel you must defend your corner. But then, the most interesting things happen in boundary conditions.<br /><br />Re learning through stories about how to cope with life, given the number of horror films consumed by my children’s teenaged friends, it’s a horrible thought that the neural pathways can’t tell the difference between actual experience and fiction. I’m sure you’re right, though. Watching a film certainly has a physical impact on us. Slavko Vorkapich (montage specialist) spoke of motor impulses “passed through joints, muscles and tendons so that at the end we duplicate internally whatever it is we are watching.”Linda B-Ahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01599899073420595717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-83423925363596264142011-08-22T11:08:55.244+01:002011-08-22T11:08:55.244+01:00Very well put, Emma. And I had never thought about...Very well put, Emma. And I had never thought about the past as the mirror of the present, and yet it's true, when we look into the past, we do meet ourselves there, and also the way we experience history is quite different from the way the Victorians did. <br />It's a truism that futuristic dystopias are about the present, of course.<br />Odd, though, that people feel we have to justify writing about the past. I wonder if people muttered about Shakespeare's history plays?Leslie Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15105465949970430998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-55312707103368423992011-08-22T09:29:31.890+01:002011-08-22T09:29:31.890+01:00What a rich and fascinating post. Thank you for gi...What a rich and fascinating post. Thank you for giving us so many interesting things to think about this Monday morning!Joannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05232567173091607831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-86222266793815170512011-08-22T08:41:53.791+01:002011-08-22T08:41:53.791+01:00Or is it ultimate history?
The main difference be...Or is it ultimate history?<br /><br />The main difference between a writer of histfic and an historian is that the former is more accessible and less opinionated. A histficer creates a feeling about the past from the available evidence. An historical novel engages imagination not reason. An historian attempts to create fact from similar, possibly more extensive, evidence. That is only possible with alchemy. A history book presents conclusions which, however well grounded, are only opinions.<br /><br />History is an idea, it is never tangible, notwithstanding the countless ruins and monuments that are flagpoles of the idea. It’s a form of ancestral worship distinguished from folklore by a supposed affinity to truth. Truth is entirely manipulable as any totalitarian regime will attest. This suggests that history as a subject only exists in the gap between opinion and fiction. Truth, or fact, doesn’t come into it.<br /><br />And the interpretation of an idea comes more naturally to a writer of historical fiction than an historian, doesn’t it?Will Coehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10759382313244081071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-90540305813308490172011-08-22T07:48:29.003+01:002011-08-22T07:48:29.003+01:00Hmmm...this will take thinking about! Is setting s...Hmmm...this will take thinking about! Is setting something in the end of the 1960's writing an historical novel - or does it need to be older than that? (It can harm the plot to have access to a mobile 'phone!)catdownunderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06959328192182156574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-74652319424770801412011-08-22T07:05:08.147+01:002011-08-22T07:05:08.147+01:00Thank you for a such a precise formulation of some...Thank you for a such a precise formulation of something that is so slippery - the link between Then and Now. I like the image of the historical novel holding the four poles apart, too.Stroppy Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16560035800075465845noreply@blogger.com