{"id":30425,"date":"2016-10-20T01:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30425"},"modified":"2016-10-11T22:57:38","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T02:57:38","slug":"qotd-the-value-of-historical-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/20\/qotd-the-value-of-historical-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The value of historical novels"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a specific genre, the historical novel is only about two centuries old. Historical fiction in the wider sense, though, is at least as old as the written word. The Epic of Gilgamesh<\/em>, the Homeric poems, the narrative books of the Old Testament, Beowulf<\/em> — the earliest literature of every people is historical fiction. The past is interesting. It\u2019s glamorous and exciting. Perspective allows us to forget that the past, like the present, was mostly long patches of boredom or anxiety, mixed in with occasional moments of catastrophe or bliss. Above all, it\u2019s about us.<\/p>\n

Have you ever stared at old family pictures, and had the feeling that you were looking into a mirror? I have a photograph of a great uncle, who was an old man before I was born. I never knew him well. But in that picture, taken when he was about fifteen, he has my ears and eyes, and he\u2019s hugging himself and looking just as complacent as I often do. I have a picture of one of my grandmothers, taken about the year 1916 — she\u2019s photographed against a background of flags and Dreadnoughts. She looks astonishingly like my daughter. It\u2019s only natural that I want to know about them. I want to know what they were thinking and doing, and I want to know about their general circumstances.<\/p>\n

For most people, even now, family history comes to a dead end about three generations back. But we are also members of nations, and what we can\u2019t know about our immediate ancestors we want to know about our ancestors in general. You can take the here and now just as it is. But the moment you start asking why things are as they are, you have to investigate the past.<\/p>\n

Why do men wear collars and ties and jackets with buttons that often don\u2019t and can\u2019t do up? It\u2019s because our own formal clothing stands in a direct line from the English and French court dress of the late 17th<\/sup> century. Why do we talk of \u201ctoeing the line?\u201d It\u2019s because in 19th<\/sup> century state schools, children would have to stand on a chalked line to read to the class. Why does the British fiscal year for individuals start on the 6th<\/sup> April? It\u2019s because, until 1752, we used the Julian Calendar, which was eleven days behind the more accurate Gregorian Calendar; and the first day of the year was the 25th<\/sup> March. Lord Chesterfield\u2019s Act standardised us with Scotland and much of Europe, and moved the first day of the year back to January — but the fiscal year, adjusted for the new calendar, was left unchanged.<\/p>\n

Why was Ireland, until recently, so devoutly Catholic? Because the Catholic Church was the one great institution of Irish life that could be neither abolished nor co-opted by their British rulers. Why is the Church losing its hold? Because it is no longer needed for its old purpose. The child sex scandals are only a secondary cause. History tells us who we are. We may feel trapped by it. We may glory in it. We can\u2019t ignore it.<\/p>\n

Richard Blake, “Interview with Richard Blake, 7th March 2014”<\/a>, 2014-03-07.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a specific genre, the historical novel is only about two centuries old. Historical fiction in the wider sense, though, is at least as old as the written word. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Homeric poems, the narrative books of the Old Testament, Beowulf — the earliest literature of every people is historical fiction. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,7,41,11],"tags":[360,262,570,33],"class_list":["post-30425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-history","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-culture","tag-england","tag-ireland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7UJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30426,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30425\/revisions\/30426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}