Amalgamation of Fiction and History
By: Zainab Tahir
Tags: Historical Fiction, Startup, Articles, Nostalgia, Fiction Writing

Close your eyes as you travel to another age

Since the beginning of centuries, fiction has always found a way to merge in with different types of genres. Except for autobiographies, fiction has paved a way to create a sense of connection between the reader and the characters’ and characters’ with the writer, in a way bringing the readers closer to the writer.

Until the beginning of Early-19th C fiction was a cross-genre for science, gothic, dark humor, and so on. A cross-genre/hybrid genre is a blend of different themes and ideas, it’s not at all new as it has its root from various writers such as Chaucer, who used art and knowledge of his age to create his characters in The Canterbury Tales. His work painted a raw image of the different type of people and how it characterized them as individuals back in the 15thC or Middle Age. Followed by Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus which is a blend of Free-verse and Prose style written in the 16thC during the Elizabethan Age.

Then enters the 17thC which saw the rise of Mock-Epics. One of the most important mock-epic work is Alexander Popes’ The Rape of the Lock. This age is also known as the Age of Satire as it made fun of the aristocrats’ in a very grand language. Sentimental Comedy of the Early-18thC was a dramatic genre in the drama that aimed to bring out tears rather than laughter, it was used to create a sense of realization and was a reaction to the Age of Satire.

Voices of the past — The Open University

“The older distinction between fiction and history … must give place to the recognition that we can only know the actual by contrasting it with or likening it to the imaginable.” — Hayden White, 1978

Early-19thC saw the beginning of the blend of History and Fiction. Historical fiction is a literary genre where the story takes place in the past. Historical novels capture the details of the time period as accurately as possible for authenticity, including social norms, manners, customs, and traditions. Sir Walter Scott started the blend with Romance and Scottish History. His works like The Fortunes of Nigel and Ivanhoe are the most prominent historical novels. The trend soon spread to other parts of the world, writers such as Honoré de Balzac from France and James Fenimore Cooper from America too started to pick up this form of writing.

Compared to the other cross-genres that have existed the one that I, personally, crave reading would be Historical Fiction. The sway art of making the readers want to sit back in their own comfortable chairs in their own houses while it took them to another place, all along painting a very real image of the society as well as that of the people so long as dropping in the fictional characters that make the readers perceive a sense of connection. The aura of Saudade. With a sense of longing for the Past, we can surmise that Historical Fictions are a type or maybe the Only type of Time Travel that exists.

A collective unit of people think that Historical Novels are “boring” or “out-of-date” as they assume that “Historical” is a synonym to the jargon of “Classic”. Not all Classic Novels are Historical nor are all Historical Novels Classic in nature. They continue to read books like The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne without knowing the historical overtone and influence on the characters and that it’s still one of the widely used genres till date.

Every country has its own history and every historian has their own perception of how history was. Let’s take one of the most widely used examples, the British rule. There has been a saying “The Sun never sets on British Empire”, during the time when half of the world was ruled by Britishers. They ruled far and wide. According to them, they were trying to “Culture” and “Civilize” the native people of countries like Africa, India, and so on. I have not personally read any such Historical work yet but British Students are taught about their rule in a much-glorified manner.

However it’s not the same case for the other countries, they talk about the torture and dystopia of their mind and how it made them feel inferior in their homelands. One of the most famous examples of this is the Jungle Book written during the British rule of an Indian Feral child living in the forest. A Caged Bird by Maya Angelou has the underlining tone of inferiority the Black felt around the White. This is One of the major drawbacks of Historical Fiction. We do not know which history is accurate when it comes to War and Conquests.

Nevertheless, various novels and poetry such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Africa), The Night The Prowler by Patrick White (Australia), Beloved by Toni Morrison (African American), One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombian), Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka (Nigerian), To the Indians who died in South Africa by T.S Eliot (American-British) and The Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel (Indian) are some of the Post-Colonial Historical fiction from the point of view of the writers.

“…history is a form of fiction, for its “truth” depends on who is telling the story: the written history of war differs depending on whether its author comes from the camp of the conqueror or that of the conquered…” — Richard Lee, 2000, ‘History is but a fable agreed upon: the problem of truth in history and fiction’.

Historical fiction is no more a contradiction than any other form of art, all of which seek both “accuracy and illusion”. Every fiction is a phantom created by the writer’s imagination. Yet historical, no less than contemporary, fiction must be sustained by a foundation of fact, creating a sense of “authenticity”, for readers to accept the fantasy as temporary reality.