A class I am taking this fall, Western Civilization, has an interesting selection of textbooks. The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Prince make sense to me but the other two, Gates of Fire and A Morbid Taste for Bones strike me as strange. Historical fiction used as textbooks? Has anybody else seen anything like this?

edit: do all touchstones lead to Harry Potter?

Message edited by its author, Aug 19, 2009, 12:30pm.

Well, I've read A Morbid Taste for Bones and it's very good (probably my favorite of the Cadfael series), but no, never had fiction assigned for a history course. Maybe the prof is trying to make a point about the way saints' relics were treated in the Middle Ages?

I have heard that the Cadfael books were good but I really expected one or two thick, dry textbooks. I never heard of the Pressfield book.

The Cadfael series well researched too. But it's still very surprising. "Gates of Fire" I don't know.

I read Gore Vidal's Burr in college for a history course. But the purpose wasn't exactly to learn the history. it was an odd sort of meta-history, about fiction and how it affects the telling, about the narration and injecting the narrator's perspective into what may be presented as a historical narrative. We also read Doctorow's Ragtime for the same course.

I read Gates of Fire some few years back and found it interesting and factual enough that one could learn much about the Spartan ethic without having to traipse through the usual suspects.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between fiction that helped build or bolster our founding myths and fiction that helps explain those myths in more accessible terms, at least for an undergrad course. Is this an undergrad course? Of, course in a more perfect world, the crushing philosophy (essentially a kind of militaristic eugenics) which yielded the valor of Thermopylae would be on the lips of every high-school student in America, but alas, I guess it's all we can do to wean them from comic books.

I, personally, would like to see a line of movies based on several of Socrates' walks with friends down to the Piraeus, or give us a fly-on-the-wall look at that amorous dinner party. Maybe a peek or two at Aristotle's classes, along the lines of The Paper Chase. I think, too, we could use some modern adaptations of Aristophanes. The journeys of Herodotus would be interesting as would a cinematic look at Thucydides.

I have no problem using current fiction to illustrate issues from the past, as long as they follow the facts as scholarship understands the facts without trying to sell a point of view.

Message edited by its author, Aug 19, 2009, 1:17pm.

as long as they follow the facts as scholarship understands the facts without trying to sell a point of view.

I am amused at the suggestion that "scholarship" has no point of view. Or, perhaps more accurately, that "scholarship" is independent of the scholars that produce it, who invariably have some sort of point of view, however subtle. People is people.

I think reading Gates of Fire for a history course is actually a pretty good idea. As long as you have the background of events presented in class, it's a much cooler way to teach about it than say, watching the movie 300 or something. Nothing beats nonfiction books for factual accuracy obviously, but there's something to be said for an actual story too. Especially if it's more of an intro course, seems like the overall story would stick with the students better too than if they just had to read about Thermopylae in a textbook.

A good idea in my opinion.
I think good historical fiction can give an idea of how people actually lived. As long as the books are well researched and any anachronisms (if any) are pointed out. Ellis Peters is a pen name of Edith Pargeter who wrote The Brothers of Gwynedd for example. If you like historical fiction, without the mystery!

The operative word being good historical fiction, of course! A rare beast!

Message edited by its author, Aug 19, 2009, 3:20pm.

Definitely true...

I read The Killer Angels and Uncle Tom's Cabin for a Civil War history class, so I've seen fiction used in history classes. We weren't meant to take them as fact but for some social history, to get a feel for the times.

Since Uncle Tom's Cabin was contemporary fiction at the time, it makes perfect sense to use it; it was an important abolitionist document.

It is an introductory level class, the last one I have to take to fill Miami's requirements, and the professor is a good one according to my source. I am just taken aback that these are the only books we are using.

The class starts Sunday, I will find out what he has in mind then.

I know that fiction can be great to capture the feel of an era. There is an episode of the Burns and Allen radio show where George gets sent out for a bar of laundry soap, that detail really highlights that it is the 1940s and not 2010.

I was reading a biography of an Englishwoman of the mid-nineteenth century some years ago. She was an invalid, and at one point in the biography, she had been confined to bed for the whole winter, but had recovered enough in the spring to go with her family to a concert. She wrote afterwards what a pleasure it had been to hear music again. It was a real shock to me to realize how lucky we are to have music, any music we want, at the touch of a button anywhere we go. Catherine Winkworth did not have that ability.

>13,
Oh, absolutely. I just felt I couldn't talk about the historical fiction used in that class without talking about the fiction used in that class in general.

Some would say, for example, that Herodotus' The Histories is fiction too you know... :)

Father of Lies and all that.

Haha...very true...

I mean because Egyptian men were obbbbbviously effeminate hacks compared to their Greek counterparts :-D

I think the problem of history books vs. fiction isn't which one is trustworthy, but which have the apparatus to let you question the book. Morbid Taste for Bones has no historical note at the back, no bibliography, no footnotes -- in short, nothing that would let the student, coming to this period for the first time, know if it was good history or completely made up out of Peters' fertile mind. That's the reason I think it's problematic in a history class. It may teach the facts of the history, but it doesn't teach how historians do their work.

That might be the point that the lecturer wants to make. To teach how to research. The question of :

"How do you confirm the veracity of one person's opinion without the knowledge of that person's bias?"

Higher education means that reading one book is a starting point to further study.

#20 Miami has a class that is required for all history majors that covers how to research and other issues with doing history. It used Simon Schama’s Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations to illustrate exactly what you and #19 is talking. That was a great class, we had eight books ranging from The Return of Martin Guerre to Eats Shoots and Leaves If anybody is interested in all eight they are tagged HST206 in my library.

History teachers at our high school tend to assign novels to some extent. Depending on how well the teacher uses them, I think it's a good idea. (I was disturbed that the AP U.S. History teacher assigned The Life of Pi because it has so many historical "themes," but then what do I know about teaching history?

Dead Certainties sounds fascinating; I've added it to my wishlist.

I picked up a few bad habits from one of my grad school professors:

"What's your evidence?"
"It sounds good, but what's the evidence?"
"It sounds good, but do you have evidence or are you speculating?"

(Any of the above are highly recommended as teenager-annoyance tools, BTW.)

There's a an encyclopedia that's popular in feminist spirituality circles (hah! pun intended) that contains a lot of fascinating stuff, a few clear errors of fact and a lot of speculation presented as established fact. I don't mind speculation, as long as it's presented as such. But once I realized that the author was not differentiating between reasonably well-established facts and satisfying but not otherwise well-supported guesswork (in areas in which I have knowledge, so I can tell the difference) I despaired of relying on any of the author's entries. I hate that. So many times I've bitten my tongue when I realized that the only source I had for some fascinating tidbit was that author.

Dead Certainties was a very enjoyable read, and I am sure that the Brother Cadfael books are also. They share that shady line between fact and fiction. Schama documented almost nothing and I think that the 'almost' made it even harder to detect the difference between the Certainties and the Speculation.

Message edited by its author, Aug 20, 2009, 12:51pm.

I run into Schama once a year or so. He lives near me, but he doesn't know me. I've gone to some talks he's given at the local public library, asked him a few questions after. My wife saw him recently at the gardening store.

I happen to have in my memory the titles of all or most of his books. Here's my plan:

I bump into him and stop him. Without saying an introductory word, I recite the names of all of his books. There are about 12 of them, if you lump together the volumes of A History of Britain.

So who or what am I then to him? A crazy person, some sort of crank? The rare academic fan, a kind of history groupie? Or is he interested, asking a question, perhaps whether I had actually read the books? Or how long had I waited for the opportunity?

It all depends on if he has also noticed you. The context. His degree of tolerance for this sort of thing and if he has the time to talk to you.

I am sure most people in the public domain love to share their opinions but how much they want to talk on a one to one basis is very much a personal choice.

Probably the method of starting a conversation described is more likely to set off alarm bells!

What is history, if not a form of narrative?

>26
"Probably the method of starting a conversation described is more likely to set off alarm bells!"

You think? I thought it might be vaguely amusing to him.

> 19: It may teach the facts of the history, but it doesn't teach how historians do their work.

Um, it's Western Civilization, which is pretty much always an entry level, freshman survey class designed to give students an overview of the major arcs in western history, i.e. 'the facts'. It's rarely designed solely for history majors and rarely designed to do anything but make sure students have a basic understanding of what happened.

Believe me, trying to get through that much history is challenge enough without bringing in methodology and historiography. For better or for worse, those topics are better left to to specialized courses for history majors.*

I think it's a fantastic selection, btw. The medieval period often gets little more than a fly-by in Western Civ textbooks, and the Brother Cadfael books are the best medieval historical fiction I've ever read. It's immersive and enjoyable, something that professional monographs often aren't. :-)

> 8 . Nothing beats nonfiction books for factual accuracy obviously

Not always true (sadly). I'm slogging through a monograph that won some prestigious history award, and wow, I don't know how! There's more fiction than fact in this piece of drivel.

* ETA: How to teach history to non-historians is an interesting discussion in its own right, and on second consideration maybe we should include some of the 'how' into it.

Message edited by its author, Aug 21, 2009, 1:48pm.

>29
Not always true (sadly). I'm slogging through a monograph that won some prestigious history award, and wow, I don't know how! There's more fiction than fact in this piece of drivel.

Boy, do I know how true that is. Just because it's non-fiction, even a best-seller, is no guarantee of quality. One of the worst history books I've ever read is *always* in stock at all the local bookstores, and is frequently recommended to me on reading lists.

> 29, 30: My curiosity is piqued. Would it violate discretion too much to disclose the titles of these books?

Anti-Recommendations. Useful.

I'll tell - it's A World Lit Only By Fire. See my review for details.

#33 Brilliant! Love the review.

Sure. It's Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia by Kathleen Brown. What could have been (should have been) be a fascinating read is instead (IMHO) a postmodernist rant on why everything else is the fault of gender discrimination. Her thesis is flawed, her logic is lamentable, she undermines her own arguments, and her evidence is confusing or lacking - yet it's highly cited and considered ground-breaking. I don't get it. Can't wait to review it.

> 33, 35 -- Thanks! I have not read either of the two. I'd always heard that A World ... was poorly written and/or outdated, so had never given it much thought, as there are so many other nice books about the Middle Ages. The Good Wives ... title does sound very intriguing. A pity if it was not.

> 29 I would love to take a class on historiography, appropriate methods, etc. especially one aimed at non-historians/laypeople. Seems like that would be just as useful as learning the history itself, if not more so.

> 36 I had a conversation last week with an incoming freshman. He told me that he thought he'd be good at history because he is "good at memorizing stuff." Ack!

Personally, taking historiography was the best thing I did. It made my view go from tunnel vision to wide-angle lens, or at least that's how it felt. I wish everyone who felt the interest could take a class in it. It is definitely useful. Maybe there's a book needed here? All the books I have on historiography contain good information, but they aren't necessarily good reading. Too dense, too jargony.

Getting a good foundation in Western Civ, though, is one of my hobbyhorses. At my institution I'm watching history majors graduate who still don't possess an outline of the history they're ostensibly studying. Getting to specialize too quickly often means that they can't connect the dots and therefore miss the bigger picture. Interpretation is meaningless without the facts. History needs both.

Message edited by its author, Aug 21, 2009, 6:57pm.

>35, 37

How depressing! It's SO annoying when the author undermines their own arguments. Indeed, it does sound like it is an interesting subject.

I wish I could have taken a class in historiography. I've done some independent reading on the subject, and found it fascinating. Norman F. Cantor's book How to Study History is very readable; I lucked into a copy of it for 50 cents, just when I needed it. :-)

Edited for typo

Message edited by its author, Aug 21, 2009, 7:47pm.

>34
Thank you!

29: We read Eileen Power's Medieval People in my Western Civ class. I found it engaging and an intriquing introduction into the ways historians go about their work. Of course, I took Western Civ. over 30 years ago. Maybe that book is considered too dull for freshman to read now. No one dies. I also recently read Jean Gimpel's The Medieval Machine, which also teaches facts while devulging historical method.

Over the past several years, as I have designed self-immersion courses in history for myself wrapped around specific periods, in addition to books, maps, Teaching Company courses and the like, I have occassionally utilized fiction books of that period to help broaden my awareness of the period. Every student of the Civil War should read Uncle Tom's Cabin because it was such an important work at the time that made such a huge impact upon the actual events.

That is not historical fiction. That is fiction popular during the period you are studying. Historical fiction is the later fiction that can help animate events of the past. Adventures of Hucklebery Finn highlights the antebellum south, as Red Badge of Courage does the military experience of a soldier of the time. I remember taking a Teaching Company course by the distinguished archaeologist Brian Fagan in which he recommends illuminating possible Minoan lifeways by reading The King Must Die, historical fiction by Mary Renault. (I did read it and found it a bit dated for my taste but I can see why Fagan would recommend it.) I personally think it is fine to introduce a limited amount of historical fiction into a history course as long as these were placed in proper context. Seizing and maintaining the interest of students can be enhanced by this method if put to proper use.

Message edited by its author, Aug 25, 2009, 10:19am.

Would you consider Red Badge of Courage to be contemporary to the Civil War? According to CK, it wasn't published until 1894.

ETA: Stephen Crane was born in 1871, so can't have participated in the conflict.

Message edited by its author, Aug 25, 2009, 6:12pm.

I fear you misread me:

"Historical fiction is the LATER fiction that can help animate events of the past. Adventures of Hucklebery Finn highlights the antebellum south, as Red Badge of Courage does the military experience of a soldier of the time. "

Ah, you are right - reading too fast. :-J

As usual I'm intrigued and fascinated by the common use of the word 'facts'. What is a fact? According to whom? What are the motives of that individual or group? During the last decade or so old archeaological finds have been re-evaluated and re-interpreted, turning much of established knowledge - 'facts' - on its head. We also rely heavily on found writings from, and on art. When then call it 'facts', because the were reported by someone ostensibly living at the time of depicted when in fact we know they too had an ulterior motive, such as throwing dirt on a ruler by demeaning his wife, or whatever. Doesn't mean the wife was a whore - just that someone wanted it to look that way.

In this ALL history is basically speculation, heavily influenced by present-day prejudices and ideals. The only thing we can KNOW is what happened when, as in 'September 1st, 1939 - German invasion of Poland'.

They were invited! Punch was served!!!1!

>45
This is the day to tell you all this, if you didn't know before.

There is a site that posts Orwell's diaries, day by day, as he wrote them, 70 years to the day after.

This allows one to follow his observations, domestic and political, as war approaches and arrives.

Coincidentally, today is the day 70 years ago that the Germans invaded Poland. If you believe in facts at all. So if you are interested you can retrace the entries in the lead-up. Or start today with Day 1 of WWII.

What is especially useful and fascinating is that Orwell's entries are linked to relevant newspaper articles of that day. You can read the pages of the Times, etc., while looking at Orwell's perspective.

http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2009/...

I think these last 100 years or so is the first time humankind can actually, in some parts of the world, objectively review time passed and re-evaluate judgements made. Photography and film can indubitably lie but extensive opportunities to check and cross-check references and information given have facilitated this - today we all know how to look for clues of people erased from the photographs ;-)

I have no problems with facts as such. I just have a very hard time treating details about what, say, Justinian (of Bysans) said or did. It's some hefty numbers of years since and no one can actually KNOW what motivated this or that, or what he actually said. As opposed to what later taletellers have put in his mouth.

Because some cultures held records-keeping in high regard we can know what was paid in taxes, what was held in warehouses, what tribute was paid to whom, etcetera. Those are, hopefully, facts.

For example law is another matter. We have, in some cases, the texts from some of the city states of Moorish Spain but we have no real idea how these laws were enforced other than from other kinds of records, and they vary in quality. Should we then make our judgement based on the texts and call it fact or should we look at the texts and say 'this was the written law, to what extent it was enforced is up for debate'?

To call it 'fact' is, to me, to make a lie not only of history but of the scientific method. Which I think is below the civilised mind.

Not that it don't happen regularly ;-)

#46 - There are a lot of polish people who feel differently, some of which are still alive. In today's paper (swedish only so no link provided) a veteran was interviewed. His big fear was that Merckel (the German kansler) would try to shake his hand, as he still felt Germans were somewhat unreliable...

> 48: You're right in may ways of course. But, for example, a text / a record / a comment (or, for that matter, a pottery shard or whatever) is in itself a fact. It's our interpretation of these that isn't factual.

Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 4:30pm.

On CSI, they're always saying that the evidence doesn't lie, but I always wonder about whether it's telling the whole truth, or even speaking the same language you are ...

> 49: Okay ;-) But then again the Poles don't have an unblemished record throughout history either.

#50 - Agreed.

#51 - My though also... It's in the eye of the beholder.

#52 - Certainly! Although - who doesn't? For a period in time, not that long ago, the swedish government forced sterilisation on people judged to be of inferior quality, and up north children speaking their native tongue when on the school premises got punished, sometimes severely. It was a conscious try at exterminating a culture not deemed good enough (the sapmi).

Indeed. I'm not particularly proud of many things the Dutch have been up to either, in the colonial past and the Atlantic slave trade for instance.

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