What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

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neilgodfrey
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by neilgodfrey »

iskander wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:53 pm Primary and secondary sources
RJE page 93-94


. . . . Objectivity was ' the product of what might be called the referential illusion'. . . . .

NB. History is an educated opinion
Yet Richard Evans is demonstrating that historians have moved on from those days when they had such views and no longer are so naive -- yet he is writing in DEFENCE of history and arguing that history is NOT merely "educated opinion". There is a certain level of objectivity and factness about what the historian writes, is his argument.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by neilgodfrey »

And while he urged ‘open discussion’ on the topic [let's say the topic is "What Makes a Writing 'Fiction' versus 'History'?], he was unable to say how this could take place at all if there was no objective, over-arching principle of evidence or rationality to which we could appeal in order to assess the opposing points of view.
Evans, Richard J.. In Defence Of History (Kindle Locations 5263-5265). Granta Books. Kindle Edition.
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lpetrich
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by lpetrich »

The Certamen of Homer and Hesiod and the Gospels: Some Comparanda | Κέλσος Matthew Ferguson discussed a rather curious work, The Certamen of Homer and Hesiod. Certamen = contest, and Homer and Hesiod are those two epic poets. This dual biography is built up around that contest, and the Gospels are like it in being built up around Jesus Christ's religious-leader career and the end of his life.

Part of that contest was to compose poetic couplets. Hesiod would think of the first line, and Homer would think of the second one. Hesiod usually thought of something awkward, and Homer a clever response. Like:

HESIOD:`This man is the son of a brave father and a weakling –‘
HOMER: `Mother; for war is too stern for any woman.’

HESIOD: `Eat, my guests, and drink, and may no one of you return home to his dear country –‘
HOMER: `Distressed; but may you all reach home again unscathed.’

MF points out some other similarities, like how the Certamen was added to over the centuries and how the Certamen and the Gospels both have rather simple language. But unlike the Gospels, the Certamen acknowledges contradictions like the numerous claimed birthplaces of Homer.

Seems like the Certamen may have been a sort of plot wrapper (?) for those clever comeback couplets. Something like the Sermon on the Mount for a collection of sayings.
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Why is "educated opinion" mere?

Arbitary opinion would be troubling in a professional, because that is the fantasy-world where the Holocaust or the American Civil War did or didn't happen, just as the writer pleases. Educated is closer to the antithesis of arbitrary than to its restatement.

It could well be that some particular pre-systematic advocate of the "educated opinion" perspective was stumped about why that doesn't imply a take-it-or-leave-it Holocaust. Not every pre-systematic thinker can be another David Hume, after all.
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lpetrich
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by lpetrich »

Lawrence Wills: “The Life of Aesop and the Hero Cult Paradigm in the Gospel Tradition” | Κέλσος Many of us have heard of Aesop's Fables, but who was Aesop?

Several authors make short references to him, and there is a detailed biography of him, one that was widely circulated and sometimes revised. In it, Aesop was a slave that was born misshapen and mute. But he shows kindness to a priestess of Isis, and that deity gives him the ability to speak. He then makes a lot of use of his new ability, skewering pretension and making points with fables. He ends up winning his freedom, but he displeases the priests of the oracle of Delphi. They sentence him to death for some manufactured offense and he is tossed off a cliff. But the people of Delphi suffer a plague, and they learn through an oracle of Zeus that they must make sacrifices to expiate their sin.

This Life of Aesop or the Aesop Romance is usually dismissed as valueless as history by present-day historians.

It has several parallels with the Gospels.
  • Aesop's healing by Isis -- Jesus Christ getting baptized
  • Both of them get missions as a result
  • Both of them speak in fables or parables
  • Both of them displease some corrupt religious leaders
  • Both of them are unjustly executed
  • The language of both accounts is relatively informal and low-register
  • Both of them have lots of direct speech as opposed to indirect speech
  • Both of them involve going from the periphery of their social worlds to those worlds' centers: Delphi, Jerusalem
So he was a sort of Jesus Christ figure.
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lpetrich
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by lpetrich »

DCHindley wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:34 am Over on the "This may be interesting" thread, MichaelBG had stated that there *must* be a way to tell from characteristics in the text. To this I replied "Both use the same techniques."
There are stylistic differences between typical historical works and typical works of fiction, as I have tried to show with my recent postings here. Differences like:
  1. First person limited knowledge vs. third person omniscient
  2. Indirect speech (lpetrich said that he is writing this) vs. direct speech (lpetrich said "I am writing this").
  3. Acknowledgment of sources and assessment of them.
The second one was a stronger distinction in antiquity, when transcripts of speeches and interviews and panel discussions and the like were not as common as they are now.

But it is possible to write a fictional work in the style of a historical one.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by neilgodfrey »

lpetrich wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:22 am But it is possible to write a fictional work in the style of a historical one.
Indeed it is. Much of Herodotus is fiction even though it is mixed with "Histories". He appears to have fabricated some sources. So is Thucydides' description of the Athenian plague based on his imagination.

There were a number of historical forgeries in ancient times -- one of the more famous was a supposed journal of the Trojan War by a supposed participant in that war, Dictys. It contains authentic sounding passages like:
As to what happened earlier
at Troy, I have tried to make my report as accurate as possible,
Ulysses being my source. The account that follows, based as it
is on my own observations, will meet, I hope, the highest critical
standards.
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iskander
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by iskander »

Silencing the past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot.
Beacon Press, Boston, 2015
ISBN 9780807080535

" Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators.. In vernacular use , history means both the fact of the matter and a narrative of those facts, both "what happened" and "that which is said to have happened"...
The proposition that history is another form of fiction is almost as old as history itself...

Theorizing Ambiguity and Tracking Power

History is always produced in a specific context. Historical actors are also narrators and vice versa. Firstly, I contend that a theory of the historical narrative must acknowledge both the distinction and overlap between process and narrative .

History as a social process, involves peoples in three distinct capacities :1) as agents, or occupants of structural positions; 2) as actors in constant interface with the context; 3) as subjects, that is, as voices aware of their vocality.

Tracking power requires ... that we do not exclude in advance any of the actors who participate in the production of history...



Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments:
the moment of fact creation( the making of sources);
the making of fact assembly (the making of archives);
the moment of fact retrieval (the making of the narrative);
and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance)...

To put it differently, any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly."
pages 26,27

NB. History is an educated opinion
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neilgodfrey
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by neilgodfrey »

iskander wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:33 am
NB. History is an educated opinion
You have not yet finished reading Richard Evans' In DeFence of History -- you have not read the last chapter, 8, "Objectivity and It's Limits"
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iskander
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Re: What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

Post by iskander »

I was reporting on the policies of the opposition, you can speak for the government :)
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