I feel the same way. In fact, my personal peeve is when a book or TV show uses a setting in an actual state, but in a fictional town. For example, the TV show The Middle is set in Indiana in the fictional town of Orson. I once read that the town of Orson was based on the real town of Jasper, Indiana. Why not just set the show in Jasper?!greenstripedgiraffe wrote: ↑27 Jun 2018, 12:26 everyone that writes history has some sort of bias, which can be seen through which details are kept, which are left out, which are emphasized, etc. However, when it comes to fiction, whether in print or on the screen, my personal preference is for it to be as accurate as possible in overall setting, characters, relationships, actions, etc. I want it to be plausible
The Relativism of Historical Truth
- bookowlie
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Re: The Relativism of Historical Truth
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A good historical novel is soundly based in facts, soundly researched, etc., but the novel part has the added advantage of taking those facts and bringing them to life - everyone in history is same as us, just in a different time period, a different role... Humans are still the same though. Emotions, driving forces, power plays, manipulators, leaders, followers, mistakes, accidental good decisions... It's all the same today, and a good historical fiction is a lovely wedding between the facts and the story behind the facts. This particular book was history-ish. History lite - a little history, but mostly romance and other fiction.cristinaro wrote: ↑13 Jun 2018, 01:23History should be more than stories. For me, history should be based on facts. This is the reason why historians should struggle to preserve their objectivity.
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I always corroborate the historical facts, names, dates, and places an author depicts in a book. I mainly do it because I want to know if the author was historically accurate. I also do it to distinguish between fact and fiction, like you said. It is fun to see how an author’s imagination runs wild based on history or a blank space within history.cristinaro wrote: ↑01 Jun 2018, 16:34 Visiting the Uffizi Gallery, Angela tackles the issue of whether the missing painting belongs to Leonardo da Vinci or not. As she learns the real story of the painting, she ponders on the relativism of historical truth: “It makes you wonder how many other things we consider true about the past are shadowed in misconceptions and cover-ups.”
What are your views on the matter? Would you be tempted to google some historical names and places in the novel to distinguish between fact and fiction?
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Historical fiction is nice because it's both entertaining and educational. However, I don't always wind up researching the subject matter afterward. In this case, I did once the Medici family was mentioned, as well as a missing da Vinci painting. Historical fiction usually doesn't include people who actually existed in real life. Instead, it would nclude the culture and customs of the time period, such as women's roles at the turn of the century or the immigrant experience of a specific ethnic group in the form of a fictional family.
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