javasaurus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
javasaurus) wrote2007-03-15 04:19 pm
javasaurus) wrote2007-03-15 04:19 pm
Historical fiction?
From a conversation at work, the following questions:
What is the difference between "historical fiction" and fiction with a historical setting? And how far back in time do you need to go to be "historical" in this sense? Could fiction written with a modern setting be considered historical fiction in the future?
What is the difference between "historical fiction" and fiction with a historical setting? And how far back in time do you need to go to be "historical" in this sense? Could fiction written with a modern setting be considered historical fiction in the future?
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the impact of specific facts about the time vs more general attitudes. is it necessary for the setting to be in the past or would it work just as well moved to another time and place. Shakespeare, for example, is timeless. you can take his works and transpose them visually to any time and still *feel* like the point is accurate. Julius Caesar is an exception to this, stuck in its setting by pure well-known history, when compared to MacBeth (written 400 years after the events that inspired it), Hamlet (200 years), Romeo and Juliet (100 years), and The Tempest (3 years), as well as just about any of the major histories like Henry V and Richard III.
Brother Cadfael, on the other hand, is very tied to the time it is set in. the combination of the crusades, the revolution of Maud, the medieval view of god, the relationship of the church and state (and at the time, the church *over* the state) are all critical to the setting of the works, the relationships of the core characters, and the circumstances that come out of it. it is historical fiction - it wouldn't be the same at all in another time.
good genre for fiction with a historical setting - just about any slave revolt story. Voyagers had a storyline that looked at both harriet tubman and spartacus at the same time. the attitude they could take, coming from a free slaveless present, is the same for both historical circumstances.
And how far back in time do you need to go to be "historical" in this sense?
how far back in time should a history class call history history? the normal academic standard is 25 years, about when the history is generally considered final and mainstream because we'll have seen the true impact of it, usually. Reagan's foreign policy was still current events during Bush I and early Clinton. By late Clinton and Bush II we could see the full impact of the support of the Taliban over the Soviets, the suppression of central american minorities, the support of Iraq over Iran, etc, things we couldn't see before then because they hadn't played out yet.
But usually, about a "generation" usually does it.
Could fiction written with a modern setting be considered historical fiction in the future?
No. It is contemporary with the time and treated as such. Historical fiction to me means written about a time in the past of the time at which it was written.
The difference is that any works necessarily reflects the attitudes of the time it was written, not the attitudes of the setting. it is the attitudes of the time it was written ON the subject of the attitudes of the setting.
Best example? Scarlet Letter. The book is not really about puratinistic ravings about adultery and lies. Its about how the 19th century looked at adultery and lies in a time when sexual mores were loosening, using a setting that allowed the author to exagerate the impact of adultery in a community in order to get his point across.
Another example? John Wayne and British WW2 films made during the war, contrasted with Patton, Saving Private Ryan, Midway, Tora Tora Tora. the attitude is different because, well, we know who won. We are looking at the men who fought it, not the men who are fighting it, and so the impact is different.
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I especially like the point you make about the importance of seeing the impact before calling it history.
Your references to Shakespeare brings me to another question. How do we consider works like his histories, which were gossied up a bit, certainly, but were supposedly history more than fiction? Would you call them the equivalent of today's dramatizations?
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one can not simply present "fact" in such works. it will end up a combination of being boring, incomplete, and likely politically incorrect (where its incorrect not to society as a whole but merely extremely powerful members of it such as the church or the crown). such works were always dramaticised in order to present a complete story.
consider how many events in your life really have an "end" the way a story or a play ends? is there any point where you could say you had achieved a closure with something while not having other aspects of your life well active and ongoing?
even the most dramatic part of my life, 13 years ago, didn't really "end" a story. in the course of the time between when that situation started and when it ended, i started several other activities that continue to dominate my life today. i would feel it very wrong to write a story that ends at that moment of resolution of that one situation given how much more of my life, impacted by the situation as much as the resolution, continued.
but a "character" is not a person. a character's story must have an ending of some form for the audience to walk away from.
that one can make a character from a real person is certain, and i believe more were created that way than "invented". even an invented character in many cases can be traced to a real person as an origin. in some cases you have to trace through a succession of characters to get to the real person whose story inspired that first author.
try tracing the Judy of Britain's comedy genre of Punch and Judy through italian commedia and you'll see how deep things can go. you will get to a real person eventually, and can trace that person back up through commedia to a character type in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.
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fiction with a historical setting doesn't actually need to be set in that era to retain the storyline. the characters are fictional, there aren't any historical events that take place during or are in any way intrinsic to the story.
according to the History Channel, WWII is the only history worth writing about! /snark *g*
honestly, i think any book written by an author about an era that takes place a generation before their own should count as historical fiction. it means they have to do their research because they cannot write a first-hand account of what transpired.
just because it's historical to us, doesn't mean it's historical fiction. wouldn't consider a book like Huckleberry Finn or Uncle Tom's Cabin to be historical fiction because it was contemporary literature at the time.
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No, it's the only history worth making a documentary about. There's a difference.
It costs the same to write a book about any time you want, but documentaries before WW2 are expensive because you have to re-enact the footage and that requires actors, costumes, etc. documentaries *after* WW2 are expensive because all of the source material is held by copyright in the hands of news organizations that charge more for the footage than the documentary would otherwise cost to make.
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That said, I have seen some really cool stuff on it that has nothing to do with WWI or WWII. Things like the armor of Troy (basically flak vests), the death of Tutankhamon, etc..
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