The Literature Network - The Problem with Historical Novels.

The Problem with Historical Novels.

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From: The New Leader
Date: 20000301
Author:Allen, Brooke

HISTORICAL FICTION was already considered a slightly degraded genre a century and a half ago, when William Makepeace Thackeray poked fun at trashy romances that featured historical figures more as scenery than as characters. And while the historical novel has had its fair share of serious practitioners, including Tolstoy, Flaubert and Thackeray himself, as well as modern writers like Susan Sontag and John Updike, the charge still holds. These works continue to carry a whiff of the not-quite-respectable--of dishonesty at best; cheesy sensationalism at worst.

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