I have been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy and he faints a lot in the Inferno. I wish I had written in for a literary fainting comparison. Please compare and contrast Dante and Lucy’s faints. That would make for a great paper.
Literature and historical scholarship are not the same, to be sure. But historical fiction that turns to libel is just not right. Precisely because of what you said - if you don't know the truth, you are left only with the author's false image - but also because these are *real people*, with real facts about their lives and actions that are not disputed or debated. We can grant Dickens a little more grace in his portrayal of the French Revolution because for one thing, he's not that wrong; for another, his characterization of the revolutionaries is an exaggeration, not a falsehood; and for another, he's not libeling anyone in particular. Keep fiction fictitious! Remember the old warning? "Any resemblance to characters living or dead is coincidental." Hilary Mantel, for example, can hardly claim that with a straight face.
I agree with most of this, but I don't agree that he's not that wrong. His source text has been proven to be remarkably wrong on the FR, which if course is not Dickens fault.
Hey David, can you share the book(s) that you read recently on this? You alluded to it on the last pod too.
And I think of The Netanyahus (or something like South Park) as the line because they're such obvious farces but completely agree on Dan Brown because he specifically presents it as some secret knowledge when it's just stuff he made up or got from extremely dubious/gullible sources.
This was also my issue with the Netanyahus ;) And the DaVinci Code! Another good example. Do you have a sense that this is a modern trend? I'm not talking about filling in gaps or fleshing out scenes (like even Thucydides)....I'm talking about books (or movies) that take real people and reinvent them as characters inconsistent with the truth of their actual lives. It just seems so lazy to me.
Thank you as always for your answers and I agree wholeheartedly on Atwood (I would add Byatt for some of the same reasons). But just to clarify, I was not discouraging Ayn Rand jokes, it just seemed like too easy an answer
I have been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy and he faints a lot in the Inferno. I wish I had written in for a literary fainting comparison. Please compare and contrast Dante and Lucy’s faints. That would make for a great paper.
Literature and historical scholarship are not the same, to be sure. But historical fiction that turns to libel is just not right. Precisely because of what you said - if you don't know the truth, you are left only with the author's false image - but also because these are *real people*, with real facts about their lives and actions that are not disputed or debated. We can grant Dickens a little more grace in his portrayal of the French Revolution because for one thing, he's not that wrong; for another, his characterization of the revolutionaries is an exaggeration, not a falsehood; and for another, he's not libeling anyone in particular. Keep fiction fictitious! Remember the old warning? "Any resemblance to characters living or dead is coincidental." Hilary Mantel, for example, can hardly claim that with a straight face.
I agree with most of this, but I don't agree that he's not that wrong. His source text has been proven to be remarkably wrong on the FR, which if course is not Dickens fault.
Hey David, can you share the book(s) that you read recently on this? You alluded to it on the last pod too.
And I think of The Netanyahus (or something like South Park) as the line because they're such obvious farces but completely agree on Dan Brown because he specifically presents it as some secret knowledge when it's just stuff he made up or got from extremely dubious/gullible sources.
OK, that's fair.
This was also my issue with the Netanyahus ;) And the DaVinci Code! Another good example. Do you have a sense that this is a modern trend? I'm not talking about filling in gaps or fleshing out scenes (like even Thucydides)....I'm talking about books (or movies) that take real people and reinvent them as characters inconsistent with the truth of their actual lives. It just seems so lazy to me.
"Charles Dickens deserves to be discussed," though some parts you discussed with disgust.
Thank you as always for your answers and I agree wholeheartedly on Atwood (I would add Byatt for some of the same reasons). But just to clarify, I was not discouraging Ayn Rand jokes, it just seemed like too easy an answer