Salve,
today we will have a geust - a British writer Ian Ross, autor of 2 historical novels - see
Ian's Amazon page.
Subejct matter is straighforward, or is it? I read three writers' novels mentioned in the essay Alfred Duggan, Rosemary Sutcliff, Wallace Breem, and I especially enjoyed Alfred Duggan's historical fiction. I have not read George Shipway, got to fix this omission (wiki
claims he wrote about cavalry combat in detail, - :) )
Ad rem:
How 'accurate' is historical fiction?
Novelists who write about the past are often asked about the
importance of historical accuracy in their work. This is perhaps a
strange question; history, after all, is not an exact science. The
past no longer exists, so how could we measure the accuracy of our
view of it? Instead, history is a method of attempting to understand
the fragments left to us of the past, a set of tools and parameters
for interpretation and speculation.
But, of course, this isn’t really want the question is about.
‘Accuracy’ (for want of a better word) in historical fiction is
all about accordance with the sources, paying attention to details
and not veering off into fantasy. It is about the construction of a
plausible view of the past that fits with what we know and does not
contain jarring anachronisms.
Put like this, the question is much easier to answer, for me at
least: ‘accuracy’ is extremely important. One of the most
fascinating aspects of historical fiction is the constant collision
and interplay between the novelistic imagination and the raw matter
of the past. Individual stories take root from the greater story of
past events, and are constantly fed by it. Beyond the story itself,
the structure that will get the characters from prologue to
dénouement and hopefully carry the readers along with it, there is
the accumulation of supporting details.
Historical research provides the furniture of my character’s
world, the clothes they wear and the food they eat. It provides the
thoughts in their heads. It is a liberation, not a chore. The more I
know of the period I’m writing about, the more comfortable and
confident I feel about imagining the bits I don’t know. And, of
course, it’s those gulfs of the unknown, and the bridges we build
to cross them, that makes the exercise so rewarding.
But can we take ‘historical accuracy’ too far? In this age of
the internet, the raw matter of history is available to all, the
sources and the speculations about any era easily accessible. So
should novelists spend less time worrying about ‘accuracy’, and
more on telling a unique and engaging story?
Writers of a previous generation were certainly less concerned
about historical rivet-counting. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels
are powerfully evocative works of imagination, but at times could
have historical purists wincing. Wallace Breem’s novel
Eagle in
the Snow concerns the fall of the Rhine frontier in the 5th
century, but his Roman army seems largely transplanted from the days
of Hadrian. Both Alfred Duggan and George Shipway wrote novels of the
Roman past which have stood the test of time, although by the
standards of modern scholarship they may default on the details.
Breem’s portrayal of the barbarian hordes menacing the Roman
frontier, however, may have been inspired by own experiences with the
North West Frontier Force in British India. Shipway’s painstaking
narration of Suetonius Paulinus’s army on the march through Britain
on the eve of Boudica’s revolt perhaps draws on his time as a
cavalry commander and staff officer, again in India, in the 1930s.
And Alfred Duggan’s service in the Norwegian campaign during World
War II doubtless fed into his descriptions of military life in a
another era.
All of these writers brought to their work a sense of
authenticity: the grit and sweat and tedium of army life, the reality
of combat, the sense of adventure in strange and distant lands in a
time before television, the jet engine and the internet shrunk the
world.
It is this sense of authenticity, I believe, that people are
looking to find when they ask about ‘historical accuracy’. Not
the sterile checking of facts, but the sensation of a real world,
complete in all its details. Whether we achieve this by personal
experience, imaginative empathy or a painstaking immersion in the
minutiae of history, it should be the desired end of all our
research.
Authenticity will always trump ‘historical accuracy’. Because
history is changing all the time.
Ian's page is
here, where this article was published as well - originally it was published
here. But pay attention to Ian's two articles on the Roman Army of Diocletian and Constantine -
part 1,
part 2 - written by Ian.
ps
I have got Ian's two novels - - Kindle prices are so good, and I am reading the first novel 'War at the Edge of the World.'
ps'
images from wiki Commons -
Musée de l'Arles antique Arles, France, some late Roman art (IV century AD),already Christian subejct matters eg Red Sea parting in the top photo. And my favorite hunting scenes, with a 'varaz' (dzik) or wild boar hunting.
Oh, there is a French comics series titled
Arelate (Arles),
taking part in the Roman civitas of Arles.
