jsburbidge (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jsburbidge) wrote2012-09-11 03:00 pm
jsburbidge) wrote2012-09-11 03:00 pm
History and Fiction
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there"
Since readers can please themselves - de gustibus, and all that -- there's no immutable law that says that you have to recognize this. But it is true that if you can't put aside your own current views you will be cutting yourself off from most of the past.
Jane Austen valorized an absence of agency in women (Mansfield Park is the high point of this). Charlotte Bronte had a serious anti-Catholic prejudice. The assumptions underlying Tom Jones are irretrievably sexist. Sayers, Chesterton, Heyer and Eliot all incorporate ant-semitic caricatures in their fiction. Almost all of Shakespeare, Jonson, Pope, Austen, Trollope, and Heyer assume that the higher your birth the better a person you are likely to be (not will necessarily be, but are likely to be). As for any classical author, the list will be by definition very long indeed.
It can also be worth remembering that in terms of material culture no culture prior to the Twentieth Century was better than a very poor developing country of the late Twentieth Century, and in some ways was almost certainly always worse (notably in medicine and public health). There were no antibiotics, no modern detergents or synthetic fabrics, and few paved roads (and those were surfaces for horse dander). Hygeine was low by modern standards until the germ theory of disease started to percolate through the populace (and through advertising) in the early 20th century. Food was expensive: for most of the population of England for most of its history the cost of food was vastly greater than the cost of lodgings.
The historical novel begins with Scott, and we've now had nearly two centuries of them. (Waverley was published in 1814.) So it's remarkable how few genuinely great examples there are of historical novels/novelists (not quite the same thing: it's arguable that Heyer was a great historical novelist but rather harder to argue for any one of her novels as being great). There's Scott himself, and Tolstoy, and Dunnett, and Eco, for Il Nomme Della Rosa, and maybe Fraser and Heyer based on their entire corpuses. Iain Pears and Hilary Mantel, perhaps, but they're still pretty recent. (Stendahl is out: La Chartreuse de Parme reflects a period he lived through; ditto for Balzac and La Comedie Humaine.)
It's interesting to note, however, the number of historical novels on the top ten bestseller lists of the past which haven't had much staying power. Sabatini, Douglas, Asch, Shellabarger, Goudge, Costain, Waltari ... It's also noticeable that some historical novels which have remained in print -- notably Doyle's The White Company, Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, and I can remember having a copy of Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days Of Pompeii in my school library -- aren't exactly well thought of critically.
Let's face it, it's difficult to write a genuinely good historical novel. You have to do a ton of research to avoid just making elementary bloopers, and a ton more to really be able to provide a feel of the period. You then have to write a genuinely good novel, which is difficult in itself. And finally, if the novel isn't just going to be a costume drama but have structural integrity, there has to be a good reason for it to occur in the past rather than the present.
Some people want historical novels because they give a candy-coated view of the past -- they strip out the hard edges of differentness which are in actual authors from the period and replace them with characters who have modern motivations and attitudes who are therefore more acceptable to the reader. I note in particular Jack Whyte and Ellis Peters here. These novels pretend to be "historical" and may reflect physical events that really took place, but they are just as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings.
Since readers can please themselves - de gustibus, and all that -- there's no immutable law that says that you have to recognize this. But it is true that if you can't put aside your own current views you will be cutting yourself off from most of the past.
Jane Austen valorized an absence of agency in women (Mansfield Park is the high point of this). Charlotte Bronte had a serious anti-Catholic prejudice. The assumptions underlying Tom Jones are irretrievably sexist. Sayers, Chesterton, Heyer and Eliot all incorporate ant-semitic caricatures in their fiction. Almost all of Shakespeare, Jonson, Pope, Austen, Trollope, and Heyer assume that the higher your birth the better a person you are likely to be (not will necessarily be, but are likely to be). As for any classical author, the list will be by definition very long indeed.
It can also be worth remembering that in terms of material culture no culture prior to the Twentieth Century was better than a very poor developing country of the late Twentieth Century, and in some ways was almost certainly always worse (notably in medicine and public health). There were no antibiotics, no modern detergents or synthetic fabrics, and few paved roads (and those were surfaces for horse dander). Hygeine was low by modern standards until the germ theory of disease started to percolate through the populace (and through advertising) in the early 20th century. Food was expensive: for most of the population of England for most of its history the cost of food was vastly greater than the cost of lodgings.
The historical novel begins with Scott, and we've now had nearly two centuries of them. (Waverley was published in 1814.) So it's remarkable how few genuinely great examples there are of historical novels/novelists (not quite the same thing: it's arguable that Heyer was a great historical novelist but rather harder to argue for any one of her novels as being great). There's Scott himself, and Tolstoy, and Dunnett, and Eco, for Il Nomme Della Rosa, and maybe Fraser and Heyer based on their entire corpuses. Iain Pears and Hilary Mantel, perhaps, but they're still pretty recent. (Stendahl is out: La Chartreuse de Parme reflects a period he lived through; ditto for Balzac and La Comedie Humaine.)
It's interesting to note, however, the number of historical novels on the top ten bestseller lists of the past which haven't had much staying power. Sabatini, Douglas, Asch, Shellabarger, Goudge, Costain, Waltari ... It's also noticeable that some historical novels which have remained in print -- notably Doyle's The White Company, Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, and I can remember having a copy of Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days Of Pompeii in my school library -- aren't exactly well thought of critically.
Let's face it, it's difficult to write a genuinely good historical novel. You have to do a ton of research to avoid just making elementary bloopers, and a ton more to really be able to provide a feel of the period. You then have to write a genuinely good novel, which is difficult in itself. And finally, if the novel isn't just going to be a costume drama but have structural integrity, there has to be a good reason for it to occur in the past rather than the present.
Some people want historical novels because they give a candy-coated view of the past -- they strip out the hard edges of differentness which are in actual authors from the period and replace them with characters who have modern motivations and attitudes who are therefore more acceptable to the reader. I note in particular Jack Whyte and Ellis Peters here. These novels pretend to be "historical" and may reflect physical events that really took place, but they are just as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings.