History and Fiction

Bibliographic Data

ID5301669
AuthorsGuy Vanderhaeghe (corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume40
Issue3
Pages429-430
Publication date2005-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-4107 • E-ISSN: 2292-8502
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/cjh.40.3.429
OpenAlexW319160133
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Despite the fact that my university education focused on historical studies, and that I completed an MA at the University of Saskatchewan, for most of my adult life I have been a writer of novels, short stories, and plays. Some people have professed surprise at this, perhaps believing that a smattering of historical knowledge inevitably excludes someone from the practice of fiction, cluttering the brain with so many facts that subtler, more creative operations are incapacitated. Skeptics might grudgingly allow that historical training in research skills can be applied to historical novels, of which I have written a niggardly two, but are unlikely to grant much more. In fact, some commentators active in the Canadian literary scene decry the current popularity of the historical novel, disparaging its success with the public, which they regard as a flight from reality on the part of writers and readers, and evidence of a debased taste for irrelevant costume drama. This challenge seems to be rooted, consciously or unconsciously, in the notion that an unbridgeable abyss separates the present from the past, and that while the present is actual and real, the past is a theoretical construct of interest to only a small cadre of professional historians. Such critics argue that by turning their eyes backward, Canadian writers neglect life as it is lived now, retreating to the safer ground of events consigned to the dustbin of history, events rendered of little matter or moment by the mere passage of time. As a sometime writer of Canadian historical novels, and a one-time student of history, I, of course, beg to differ with them. For me, then is not radically divorced from now, the two are not airtight, exclusive compartments. As T.S. Eliot noted in his poem Burnt Norton, Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future contained in time past. This conviction remains the heart of historical education, which emphasizes continuity and causation, preserves the record of societies' achievements and failures, and also instills a profound sense of the tenuous nature of civilization. These are beneficial attitudes for citizens of every sort, but perhaps particularly so for writers of fiction. Donald Creighton's insistence that History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance ... the encounter between character and circumstance is essentially a story, might seem too old-fashioned a notion for many historians, but early on I adopted it as a personal mantra, a definition of what I aspired to do as a novelist. If nothing else, Creighton's emphasis on the connection between people and events offered a useful frame of mind in my attempt to bend the raw, reluctant material of life into narrative

Art · Political science · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy

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