Accuracy in Historical Fiction?

[Lady of Winterfell]

When you read historical fiction, does it bother you when it doesn't match exactly with historical events? Or is it alright for the author to change some things to make a better fictional story?

I don't mind if the historical fiction I read isn't exactly accurate. As long as the big events are there, I'm fine with changes. After all, it is called Historical Fiction.

Personally, I'm not a big history buff. I need something a little more interesting than a textbook to get me into some time periods in history. I think Historical Fiction does this for me. I will usually read the book, and then I will go research the events that were included to see how history varied from the authors portrayal of them. I like to know how things actually played out, but I also love to experience that setting through a great character and story.

So, how do you feel about accuracy in Historical Fiction?

 

[BetaWolf]

I'm a community college history teacher, so let me answer two questions you pose:

#1: it's okay with me if some details are off. As a historian, there are things that I'd like to be able to write about, but that little thing called evidence gets in the way. So when you write historical fiction, you can fill in the gaps with your imagination. And that's fun.

#2: it warms my heart that it inspires you to learn more. I give my students historical fiction and get them to write their own as an assignment--so, it's 1863 and you're a Civil War soldier, so pick a side and write a fictional letter home. Some of them make up a character with a great backstory and details, details, details. Others just write themselves into it.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I'm glad I could bring some joy into your day.

That sounds like a great assignment! I wish we had done more of that in my history classes. I've decided that its not history itself that I don't like, its the way it generally seems to be taught (or at least was taught to me). I didn't enjoy any of my history classes in high school, and I think if they had done more assignments like what you are describing I would have enjoyed it more. I had a better time in college; I took Art History classes and an Ancient Egyptian class and loved them. But I think the teachers had a lot to do with that as well.

History itself can be very interesting and quite entertaining. But when you just sit and read a bunch of dates, and 'he did this' or 'they did that', it becomes quite dull. Enter in Historical Fiction.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I just saw this thread, and thought I should post a book review my friend wrote of Clifford Beal's Gideon's Angel. Now, I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on it, but my friend starts with some general comments on historical fiction, which I'll quote here:

Would you say, reader, that you like history? And if so, do you demand some sort of authenticity, some truthiness, from its depiction in fiction? In other words, when you read historical fiction, is it partly to learn something about the past? Or is a historical setting more like a fancy suit that just makes everything in a story snazzier?

If you're a purist of the former outlook, that historical fiction must seek to teach the reader something of the past, you'll be disappointed by virtually every single historical fiction book in existence, since there are basically only two types of historical fiction authors out there: the career novelist and the career historian. No matter how intensely novelists research history, they've dedicated their life work to perfecting their writing, meaning they tend to apply a thin historical veneer to what is otherwise a simple story of love, revenge, or both. Conversely, historians busy themselves studying history, which leaves little time to burnish their fiction writing skills, and as a result their accounts tend to be weighed down with those giant cement shoes known as "too much detail about stuff no one cares about anymore" and "'character development? I can't do that—these are people from history!'". It's incredibly rare to find a novelist who possesses deep knowledge and understanding of history, or a historian with a gift for fiction writing (or in many cases, nonfiction writing too, sad to say).

Historical fiction, especially those works written by historians, also faces a fundamental problem: the past totally sucked. No matter which time period a given story is set in, the world is almost certainly dirtier, crueler, more prejudiced, and less convenient than ours, whatever the current world's faults. I can hear, from among my audience of literally dozens, a chorus of gasps that I could prefer the current world to the glorious wonders of the past, but answer me this, you Gone with the Wind-loving romantics: can you honestly say, with a straight face, "yep, 1864 America was a great time to be alive!" Or perhaps you think wistfully of Qing-era China, but conveniently forget about foot-binding, the indiscriminate slaughter of civil wars, opium, or predatory Western imperialism. Or for lovers of English/French history, it's pretty hard to see in rosy hues the endless slaughter of, not only the enemy across the Channel, but also the people at home if they were not of that moment's favored religion, wouldn't you say?

To be honest, I don't really agree with the underlying assumption--that the past was worse than the present. The present is plenty bad for many people, and past eras typically were less gruesome than one might assume. So I think there's plenty of material available to make a balanced drama. (Of course, we can except medicine and disease from that point--medicine was worse and disease deadlier at pretty much all points in human history.)

But I think he does bring up a good question--to what degree should the historical novelist take liberties with history, and just how much historical detail should the historical novelist employ in her/his books?

Speaking personally, if I'm reading about a time and place I know well, I want it to feel authentic. I don't need to know every last detail, but I want to feel like the book gives an accurate impression of the general feel of the place/time. If there are Vikings, and they don't look, sound and act like we know Vikings looked, sounded and acted, then I get annoyed.

 

[BetaWolf]

I think what historical fiction does better is give the *feel* of a time and place. Take Alfred the Great. Dates, places, important connections to make on why he was important. That's history. It's a soft science.

But historical fiction--smell the hearth cakes burning on the griddle. Hear the old peasant woman growl at her king. Feel the fish as it smacks across his royal face, in as much detail as the author wants to go.

 

[Brian G Turner]

So, how do you feel about accuracy in Historical Fiction?

For myself, very important. I specifically avoid Historical Fiction where the reviews point out serious short-comings in the research.

Unfortunately, I've picked up a couple where this wasn't mentioned and the historical element is treated as some form of background that's not important. Ironically, they tend to be weak on character development as well.

What you end up with is light reading with a thin historical veneer. I guess this suits a general audience that wants a sense of "other time" without it getting in the way.

There are books that can keep a sense of time, place, character and story, but finding a balance between entertaining the reader and demonstrating the depth of research is a tricky one.

I've found Robert Fabri's Vespasian series pretty good for this - he's done his research and it shows, but he still wants to tell a story about people.

As we've going through the early stages of the Roman Empire, there's a lot of story to tell, but he still manages to weave in more in a way that doesn't challenge suspension of disbelief. I find his portrayal of young Caligula very refreshing, much needed, and poignantly tragic.

Then you get into the real heavyweights, which so far to me are Sharon Penman and Colleen McCullough - the former writing about the middle ages, and the latter about the Roman republic. At times, both authors ramble a little too much, describe a little too much, but still have voice enough to convey powerful narratives, and their historical fiction feels very authentic.

Then there's Historical Fantasy, which allows the author to play a bit more with actual history - Anne Lyle does this really well with her Alchemist of Souls books, using an alternative Elizabethan England where she married and had children; and Stephen Lawhead's Byzantium I found so convincing I tried researching the protagonist and was astonished to draw a blank, though many of the other cultures and settings are very real (Saxon England, Viking Scandinavia, Constantinople, Baghdad Caliphate, etc).

There are other historical fantasies out there - the one Nerds Feather linked to sounds much more like historical fantasy than historical fiction - but it's all very dependent on the reader's personal taste.

For example, I can respect Guy Gavriel Kay as a writer, but detest the way he copy/pastes history and then changes the names - it's like he's claiming historical events as his own creative invention.

Then you get historical fiction writers who provide a decent enough read, but can be a bit light on character, such as by Ben Kane.

But obvious anachronisms that show poor research or writing ability? No, I can't accept that because it defeats the purpose of "historical" in the genre title.

I still remember putting down a book about the fall of Constantinople, which suffered both from bad writing and bad research. Bad writing I can put up with if the historical detail is useful or interesting, but there's no point calling a book historical fiction or historical fantasy if history is not given any respect.

 

[Hex]

I like flavour, not details. If I wanted detail etc I'd read the history.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Then there's Historical Fantasy, which allows the author to play a bit more with actual history - Anne Lyle does this really well with her Alchemist of Souls books, using an alternative Elizabethan England where she married and had children; and Stephen Lawhead's Byzantium I found so convincing I tried researching the protagonist and was astonished to draw a blank, though many of the other cultures and settings are very real (Saxon England, Viking Scandinavia, Constantinople, Baghdad Caliphate, etc).

I'm currently reading Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts, and I'd probably put this in a category between these and epic fantasy--the cultures/polities all have clear real world analogues, and are spaced out just like real world cultures/polities, but beyond that it's mostly myth making.

Still, I've ended up researching a lot of stuff I didn't know about before, so that's something...

 

[Vertigo]

I don't want detail necessarily but I absolutely do want accuracy. Two or three decades ago people didn't seem to be too bothered about historical accuracy but I think that has changed big time. If historical films or books are produced that are historically inaccuract they tend to get slated (Mel Gibson please take note).

For any recently written books with a historical slant I absolutely expect them to be historically accurate. If I find they're not, that's pretty much a show stopper for me. As I say they don't have to immerse me in massive historical detail but what is included should certainly be well researched and correct.

 

[svalbard]

It is critical to the story and most people who read HF will have some idea how the events they are reading about ended up. Remove the accuracy and all you have is fantasy. The fun part is reading another person's musings as to why historical events happened the way they did. I would also add that authenticity is a critcal part of any good HF. As said before in this thread, it is important, for myself anyway, that the voices and actions of the characters are of the period in question.

 

[the Jester]

For me, I like it to be accurate as far as the story assumes accuracy, if that makes sense. In other words, if the story relies on historical events, I want the events in question depicted in a way that is consistent with the way they came down to us- but it's fine if they were misreported, misunderstood, lied about, etc.

That all assumes that the story is set in our history and not an alternate history, of course.

 

[BetaWolf]

I realized the limits of historical fiction when I was reading Bernard Cornwell's Lords of the North. You've got to let the bigger plot work its way out as it would have historically. Historical rulers have to rule and then die at the appropriate time. Otherwise you've got a divergent timeline (which can be explained, as it was at the beginning of Blackadder, series one). HIDDEN SPOILER:

Spoiler

Two fictional characters (as in non-historical, never existed) are leading a council on who should be supported as King of Northumbria. Now these two guys are young, brave manly men, but both decline because ultimately Cornwell had to let the plot resolve itself according to how things turned out historically. I thought to myself, if this was fantasy fiction, the author could have handed the crown to any of his worthy characters, men who were much more popular than the current king, whom they supported because, well, they didn't actually want to be king themselves because it was hard and stuff.

 

[EloiseA]

One of the first serious works of historical fiction I read was Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I was at school and had enjoyed reading Mary Renault's The King Must Die.

Well. apples and oranges of course, but I found that Yourcenar somehow could access the mindset and thinking of classical times and that interested me tremendously. We had done Virgil at school and Hadrian was steeped in Catullus, I could imagine that people back in classical Greece spoke in Yourcenar's style of dialogue.

Because I read a number of medieval texts from time to time -- Julian of Norwich's 'shewings', Teresa of Avila, Margery Kempe, Christiane de Pisan, Geoffrey Chaucer, I am familiar with certain attitudes and ways of thinking that I'd now expect to find in historical fiction dealing with medieval times, rather than contemporary motivations or reasoning. Another reason I was so enthralled with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies.

That said, I'm still fascinated by books that play with historical what-ifs or alternative histories -- Robert Harris' Fatherland where the Third Reich wins WWII and parts of Ian McEwan's Atonement.

 

[EloiseA]

And as I was browsing around book reviews this morning, I came across UK writer Naomi Alderman saying the same kind of thing --

'I have read quite a bit of historical fiction, everything from Ellis Peters to Umberto Eco, Hilary Mantel to Rosemary Sutcliffe. I am impressed by all those four -- what I'm unimpressed by is writers who fail to imagine how minds were different in different eras. I think one sees it more in film than novels -- in novels you have to put yourself inside the mind of the characters, perhaps in movies you can get away without doing it.'

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/...-of-a-Different-Era-Naomi-Alderman/ba-p/10465

 

[HareBrain]

what I'm unimpressed by is writers who fail to imagine how minds were different in different eras.

I was about to post yesterday saying the same thing. So now I shall. This is from this blog post on John Cowper Powys's Porius.

Historical fiction is always based on an underlying anachronistic assumption, and that is that the personages of the past had a consciousness which is to all intents and purposes the same as ours. Modern readers are encouraged to empathise with or understand historical personages by the way the fiction underlines the similarity of consciousness between the figures of the past and ourselves - or at any rate, by the way the fiction does not emphasise differences in consciousness. Very good historical fiction (Yourcenar's or Broch's for example) shows greater awareness of this difference in consciousness even if it doesn't foreground it, while very bad historical fiction (Ken Follet's or Tracy Chevalier's for example) merely describes modern people in costume, participants in a fancy dress ball or a historical reconstruction (there's always a Rolex showing somewhere, or someone will sneak off behind the scenery for a quick fag and a facebook update).

In historical fiction set in the not too remote past, this underlying anachronism is not really apparent and not really important; but in historical fiction set in the very remote past, this assumption of an identically similar consciousness between historical character and modern reader becomes a form of imaginative blindness which effectively undermines the psychological realism of historical fiction. (This might account for the relative lowliness of the genre in the Academy.)

 

[BetaWolf]

Good points, EloiseA and HareBrain. In historical writing, we identify the tension between empathy (being able to put yourself in the shoes of someone in the past) and the context of the times. Motivation and expectations are always the best place to start in historical fiction. Otherwise it ends up being as HB's quoted writer says either a fancy dress ball or two-dimensional moralizing.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Historical fiction is always based on an underlying anachronistic assumption, and that is that the personages of the past had a consciousness which is to all intents and purposes the same as ours.

But they did - it's the cultural attitudes and biases that are difference.

People in the ancient and mediaeval worlds are still modern humans and apt to already have developed explanations suited to their cultural mindsets.

To claim that people in recorded history do not possess the same conscious faculties as ourselves is simply an arrogant projection of a modern sense of self-superiority.

Unless, of course, the author meant cultural biases, but instead they talk about ancient peoples having underdeveloped consciousness.

I've ordered Porius anyway as it does sound interesting.

 

[HareBrain]

But they did - it's the cultural attitudes and biases that are difference.

People in the ancient and mediaeval worlds are still modern humans and apt to already have developed explanations suited to their cultural mindsets.

To claim that people in recorded history do not possess the same conscious faculties as ourselves is simply an arrogant projection of a modern sense of self-superiority.

Unless, of course, the author meant cultural biases, but instead they talk about ancient peoples having underdeveloped consciousness.

I've ordered Porius anyway as it does sound interesting.

No I don't think he was talking about cultural bias (unless you use a very wide definition of that, i.e. language = culture), but neither was he talking about mental capacity.

Yes, they were modern humans, and they had the same capacity for consciousness (the same "conscious faculties" if you like -- if you took a baby from 400AD and brought him up today, there would be no difference between him and anyone else). But that doesn't mean they had the same conscious state. Language shapes reality as well as the other way round. Our ideas about ourselves -- the fact that we can talk about having "a self" -- is made available to us by language that might well not have been available to ancient peoples. Even the word "ego" in the sense understood today is a relatively recent coining. Without language that differentiates between "dream" and "real life", would you really be able to make a distinction between the two? (Admittedly you'd probably have to go a long way back in human history before you reached such a linguistic state.) How would your perception of the world differ if your language only had present tense, as that of at least one South American tribe is said to do?

I'm not an expert on consciousness, but I've read several books such as by Julian Jaynes, Ken Wilber, James Frazer etc that describe how the kind of consciousness we take for granted today is actually fairly recent. It's no slight on ancient peoples to say so, no more than to say their technology or science weren't as developed as ours. Our consciousness draws on our entire cultural history, including language. If that's what you mean by "cultural bias", then fair enough, but it seems more fundamental than bias to me.

 

[EloiseA]

Harebrain, thanks for that Powys link. I find his work hard to read but like his brother TF Powys, worth the effort.

I agree with Brian that feelings of 'superiority' are unjustified -- this may go back to notions that emerged during the Enlightenment about intellectual and moral progress in certain civilizations.

But consciousness is not synonymous with culture -- I think of Virgina Woolf writing that 'on or about December 1910 human character changed'. She is referring to a significant shift in perception with the art of the Impressionists, that we have learned to 'see differently'. In the same essay she anticipates Modernism and another kind of understanding of how the novel expresses human awareness as a 'stream of consciousness', an inward reality rather than outer.

There's commonality in our shared human histories and there I agree with Brian -- we can read Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey and be moved by them as the ancient readers were moved, for all that we might miss nuances or undertones. We can read Piers Plowman. Yet the differences of historical period are there too: cultural, linguistic, moral, concepts or honour and feudalism, hatred of the body, Otherness. That Otherness isn't inferior or completely inaccessible but it belongs to another kind of society and another time even within the parameters of our own culture.

 

[HareBrain]

The most impressive and creative attempt to show an earlier stage of consciousness that I've read is chapter 1 of Alan Moore's The Voice of the Fire, which is from the POV of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer. Moore has no choice but to use modern words, of course, but you could hardly call it modern language, and at first it is very difficult to read (it makes Riddley Walker read like something published by the Plain English Campaign).

I've found this quote, where the narrator sees some kind of shamanic runic "writing" for the first time, which gives something of its flavour.

She is now say of stick-head men, and of they saying-path. [...] Say she, for make this saying-path they stick-head men is want of a strongness and a queer glean that is not hind-whiles in of they. A strongness that come from other world, in neath of dirt, where is they spirit walk.

The use of "glean" for idea or thought, throughout the chapter, shows that the character does not perceive thoughts as having come from himself (he has no sense of self except in the bodily sense); instead he "gleans" or finds them. Julian Jaynes argues that before the development of the modern ego-self, people regarded their thoughts as having come from gods, and experienced them almost as auditory hallucinations. I'm not sure how true that is, but to think people had the same attitude towards their own mental selves as we do might well be a mistake. Whatever the timescale of our physical brain development, our consciousness developed from one similar to that of other primates, and it didn't spring full-formed overnight; it evolved, and is still evolving.