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historical FICTION or HISTORICAL fiction?
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From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 06:04:15 -0400
Connie Rockman writes:
I find historiography fascinating. I recollect reading an article some years ago (I believe it may have been in The New Advocate) in which the author reported his/her study of several familiar historical fiction works set during the American Revolution. What the researcher discovered was that each was very much of its time noting that Johnny Tremain had a viewpoint that was in keeping with the WWII time period in which it was written while My Brother Sam is Dead reflected the sentiments of the Vietnam era.
Related to this is the whole unsettled quality of historical "fact" itself. It can be very hard for children and adults alike to accept the possibility that what they thought they knew may not be so. So many Jefferson experts, for example, refused to consider the possibility that their man had fathered children with Sally Heming until the DNA evidence forced them to concede. Some years ago I heard a talk by Linda Levsik, a scholar who researches how children do and think about history, and she said that the hardest thing to teach children was to "tolerate ambiguity."
I think that is true for humans at all ages. We want to know definitely about the past. It is so unsettling to think that all that we know is in flux. All the moreso when the world is so scary and unpredictable.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Fri 07 May 2004 05:04:15 AM CDT
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 06:04:15 -0400
Connie Rockman writes:
I find historiography fascinating. I recollect reading an article some years ago (I believe it may have been in The New Advocate) in which the author reported his/her study of several familiar historical fiction works set during the American Revolution. What the researcher discovered was that each was very much of its time noting that Johnny Tremain had a viewpoint that was in keeping with the WWII time period in which it was written while My Brother Sam is Dead reflected the sentiments of the Vietnam era.
Related to this is the whole unsettled quality of historical "fact" itself. It can be very hard for children and adults alike to accept the possibility that what they thought they knew may not be so. So many Jefferson experts, for example, refused to consider the possibility that their man had fathered children with Sally Heming until the DNA evidence forced them to concede. Some years ago I heard a talk by Linda Levsik, a scholar who researches how children do and think about history, and she said that the hardest thing to teach children was to "tolerate ambiguity."
I think that is true for humans at all ages. We want to know definitely about the past. It is so unsettling to think that all that we know is in flux. All the moreso when the world is so scary and unpredictable.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Fri 07 May 2004 05:04:15 AM CDT
