Historical fiction?

[javasaurus]

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?

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

definitely, and the genre of such has been around since greek drama and likely before.

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.