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

[TedM]

Hi DC,

I"m not seeing much connection between what I wrote and what you wrote. I was contrasting those who think they are writing about events of the past and those who know that they aren't.

Ted

The best that we can hope for is that they writers believed that what they passed on reflected the past

I suspect that writers who are writing stuff they think reflects the past DO WRITE DIFFERENTLY than writers who are writing stuff that they KNOW does NOT reflect the past, but are trying to make it appear that it does. As such, the gospel of Mark should show such differences from the other gospels IF in fact GMark was the latter, and the other 3 are the former.

The reason I BELIEVE they would be different is 'common sense', 'intuition', 'logic' or some combination of these - that simply recognizes the fact that people behave differently when their motivations are different. They may TRY to behave exactly the same and the more clever ones can perhaps get away with it, but the fact remains that their THOUGHT PROCESS is DIFFERENT. This should in theory make their results subject to testing that helps reveal their true motives.

Do I have those tests, or good examples? NO.

What I think you are talking about is what White calls "ideological implication." However, all writing reflects the ideology of the writer. Hand in hand. Now it is fair that folks differ in their opinions about the ideology expressed.

K. Marx, for instance, interprets historical evidence using his socio-economic theories. We can differ over their value for interpretation, or how they were used, out of context, by the various parties that fought for the socialist cause(s) in the Russian Revolution (1917+). Marx himself was an expert at classical economics, but he thought he could improve on it by taking the implications of market forces to their extremes and thus predict the future, a utopian communist world state. You don't have to agree with Marx to find value in his book Capital, which is why I own a set.

M. Rostovtzeff sees ancients applying capitalistic principals as if everyone in all periods have always done so, but borrowed the terminology of Marx to describe how Rome fell apart. They were not capitalistic enough. He wrote in 1926 after the Communists had won control of all Russia from the control of the "White Russians" and the western armies that had intervened, forcing him to seek exile in Sweden, the UK and finally the USA. Besides English, he wrote later editions in German and Italian. The English edition was finally revised in by P. M. Fraser in 1957, incorporating Rostovtzeff's ideas from the German and Italian editions. Fraser was well aware that much of his terminology was anachronistic, but he examined things in minute detail, making the book a valuable reference work, which is why I own a set.

But in 1973, M. I. Finley, influenced by Karl Polanyi and Max Weber, blew apart any notion that modern socio-economics existed in ancient times, but that exchanges and profit motives revolved around the status groups jockeying for power in city states, and that one of the strongest motives for social change was relief from debt obligation and resulting slavery. There may have been a few principals to derive from the multitude of local economies centered around city states, and these really only applied to Greece and Rome, not to the Ancient Near East in general. Wealth was accumulated from aggregation of power over rents and taxes, not from application of economic policy. Local economies just happen when status groups vie for power over one another. His work came out in a second edition in 1985. I don't agree with everything he says, but I own a copy.

But then in 2002 there was an anthology of articles from a wide array of contributors edited by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden that took the debate to new levels, showing that Finley was dead wrong in some areas, but not too far off in others. I don't agree with everything that everybody says, but I own a copy.

It could be argued that Rostovtzeff's reconstruction of ancient economics is heavily indebted to his anti-communist POV. It could also be argued that Finley's reconstruction of ancient economies was heavily influenced by the economics of Polanyi and the sociology of Weber. Same goes for those who contributed to Scheidel & von Reden's book. I can overlook these, and pick out what seems out of place, based on what I have read and think I know about ancient history, applying the same principal advocated by postmodernists, that the past is always interpreted by the critic's present, including my own.

I say we just have to learn to live with this situation. Things still happened in the past, some of which relics tell interesting stories, but not the whole story. No one can know everything that happened, and even if one was actually there, would not know every cause that caused "it" to happen. We'd have to be an all-knowing god to know everything, and most of us (here) aren't sure that such a god exists, at least as a conscious entity.

Well, need to go and take a shower before dinner when the wife gets home from her late day at work.

DCH

[neilgodfrey]

A very respectable answer to the question is found in Dorrit Cohn's The Distinction of Fiction. I have been working on key points in the book for some time now and preparing to write something in relation to certain biblical texts. She is very astute. She takes on postmodernists for even "wilful misreadings" in their claims that there is little, if anything, dividing historical and novelistic narratives. The strength of her work is in focusing on the "borderline cases" that have commonly been used to point to this lack of difference -- Cohn shows that in fact those borderline cases demonstrate the criteria for difference most clearly of all. Criteria relate to authorial omniscience, a narrative point of view from character's perspective*, and inner life of characters, narrator and authorial voice, etc...)

The post I am wanting to start with after the prep is to demonstrate the stark differences between ancient biographies of historical persons and the gospel narratives of Jesus. I have criticised Burridge before for his superficial comparisons that lead him to classify the gospels as ancient "biographies" but drawing upon studies in literary criticism will, I think, more effectively demolish his argument.

As for ancient historical works more generally it helps to know something of what a pre-Enlightenment "historian" was trying to accomplish. Sometimes a historian had no idea what went on at a critical point he wanted to add to his narrative so he made up scenarios that he believed "would have happened", were "plausible", "true to life". Thucydides is believed to have done just this in his description of the Athenian plague -- and to help fill in details he drew upon other works, including Homer, iirc.

Herodotus has been accused of writing mostly fiction, even of having probably never set foot outside Greece, by Detlev Fehling in Herodotus and his 'Sources': Citation, Invention and Narrative Art -- and Fehling has earned some bitter enemies as a reward for his efforts.

A recurring theme in many of my blogposts, sometimes spilling over into other forums, has been the question of how we know if a work is genuinely a "historical work" and not primarily fabrication (i.e. historical fiction, say). (And as with this thread, I find that simply raising the question is a sure way to bring about an early end to discussion.) The criteria I have used are genre, provenance and independent corroboration. I find it interesting that Dorrit Cohn's criteria enrich some of the points I have wondered about and suggested in the past.

I make these points just to indicate that others have addressed this question in some depth and there are clues to establishing the difference between what we think of as history and fiction.

Then again, if someone sets out to deliberately deceive and they know all the tricks then it may be impossible to know they are doing so. If there were criteria that could readily expose deliberate deception we would not need court trials, judges, cross-examination, lie detectors, etc....

Added later
* I said something about "narrative from a character's perspective" -- Cohn brings that down to the micro level of sentence structures that sound so natural as we read them that we never notice anything artificial about them until we have them pointed out and we take time to stop and think about them. For example: A past tense with an adverb that indicates a future action -- "His plane left tomorrow". Makes perfect sense as we read about the character and the pressures upon him etc. The past tense is from the authorial perspective but the tomorrow is a future indicative: the author has shifted gears and given the reader the author's perspective. That's not history; it's fiction, if you like. The narrative's reference is to the world and people created by the author; it is not referenced to the real external world. It's not how a historian or biographer would express it. I'm reminded of Mark 14:1 -- "After two days was the passover". But that's the English translation and I need more information about the Greek (Ἦν) to know if it is a genuine parallel example.

Cohn's criteria aren't all so subtle as this one, by the way.

I see your anti-postmodern Cohn, and raise you a Narratologist (can't get any more post-modern than that):

Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Fictional vs. Factual Narration in The Living Handbook of Narratology website:
http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/ind ... _Narration

The problem with reading this kind of thing is that it is really easy to get swamped with details.

DCH

Nothing wrong with details. It is in fact the sorts of arguments of the Schaeffers et al that led to Cohn's book and she uses the details to demolish their two-dimensional readings of the texts. The postmodernist elision of author and narrator, of fiction and nonfiction, is all very two dimensional, often with the very examples they use to prove their points in fact doing the very opposite.

But discussion cannot happen without addressing the details. I mentioned some of them in the original post. They really do go to the heart of the question. If we don't take up the details and fall back on postmodernism then the question you raise is merely rhetorical and the thread deserves to run out before it starts.

Similarly with discussions of history writing. The Whites and co really cannot genuinely blur the distinctions as many say they do -- enough historians have addressed the postmodernist view of history with details (all under the same criteria as Cohn covers -- referentiality, voice and mode, narrator/author.)

[neilgodfrey]

In Mark Jesus speaks and behaves as a Jewish heretic . It should be possible to find some evidence for this.
For example:

Unfortunately even if we were certain of external evidence establishing that Jesus was considered by certain quarters "a Jewish heretic" in his own day that detail alone would not be able to settle the question of whether the overall narrative told about him in the gospels is "historical" or "fictional".

Any religious narrative about a heretic contains fiction because gods and their instructions are fiction to the unbeliever. For the unbeliever the " overall narrative" would be fiction. However, the group of people that live through the times described in the narrative is not fiction.


Jan Hus was burnt at the stake after having been sentenced as a heretic by the Council of Constance for some 'fictional' disagreement with the religious authority which was defending God !!!. Was Jesus one like Jan Hus?

Does not this point confuse the fanciful beliefs of historical actors with the question of the actors and events being fantasy?

[neilgodfrey]

I think sometimes the postmodernist criticism is sidestepping (or rather confusing) the actual question that I understood had been raised here. There is a difference between whether and to what extent X can be established as a "fact" and the world where there is intention to relay and freedom to test purported facts. They are quite different questions, are they not?

[iskander]

...

Does not this point confuse the fanciful beliefs of historical actors with the question of the actors and events being fantasy?

The story of Jesus is told in a brief narrative , gospel of Mark, which describes the conflict between a reformer and a religious authority . The story was told by a reformer . There is evidence that there were changes to the liturgy of the target religion .And that those changes were made by a self preserving priesthood.The conclusion is that research on the beginnings of Christianity seems to be on the right path and that money should be directed to people qualified for this research in preference to other projects.


A religious researcher would need only to find more evidence , but an unbeliever researcher would have to clear his/her mind of the obfuscating belief that religious eccentrics can never be real people .

[outhouse]

Does not this point confuse the fanciful beliefs of historical actors with the question of the actors and events being fantasy?

I would agree except the authors place this within a lifetime of said events places and known real people.

We know Moses, Noah and Abraham are fictitious characters in full because the pseudohistory is just that. With the Jesus character they frame it in a historical position, then add their theology, mythology and fiction, then redact it slightly as popularity dictates changing opinion.

[DCHindley]

Ancient fiction as a genre was very likely more rare than it is presently (I mean, the local modern bookstore is probably stocked close to 50%/50% non-fiction to fiction), which combined with the relative scarcity of surviving evidence due to the ravages of time, means we are not left much of anything to subject to quantitative analysis.

Maybe we should be trying to determine what "tells" (the unconscious behaviors that tip someone off to what your thoughts or intentions might be) might be present in a certain kind of text, then see if these are actually there. However, even this might end up being circular: "what should be present in such a text ..." somehow ends up being "what is present in this sacred text is what should be present ...".

DCH

TRYING to return to the original post.

A few ancient works like Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius do seem to be fictional in our sense. They are clearly intended to be read as pure invention. However these works seem unusual and marginal in the ancient world.

[DCHindley]

Nothing wrong with details [which DCH feels swamped by]. It is in fact the sorts of arguments of the Schaeffers et al that led to Cohn's book and she uses the details to demolish their two-dimensional readings of the texts. The postmodernist elision of author and narrator, of fiction and nonfiction, is all very two dimensional, often with the very examples they use to prove their points in fact doing the very opposite.

But discussion cannot happen without addressing the details. I mentioned some of them in the original post. They really do go to the heart of the question. If we don't take up the details and fall back on postmodernism then the question you raise is merely rhetorical and the thread deserves to run out before it starts.

Similarly with discussions of history writing. The Whites and co really cannot genuinely blur the distinctions as many say they do -- enough historians have addressed the postmodernist view of history with details (all under the same criteria as Cohn covers -- referentiality, voice and mode, narrator/author.)

Well, all I can say is that your way of describing the positions of some postmodernists as "two dimensional" and somehow blurring the distinction between author and narrator, is that I do not remember ever seeing anything like what you describe Cohen as saying as adopted positions of any critical school described by Alun Munslow in Deconstructing History, 2nd revised edition 2006, 1997). That they somehow intentionally blur the author-narrator distinction may be charged by some, but it does not match adopted positions, IIRC.

Funny thing is, the narratology related web article I previously provided a link to, and which is very much postmodern, cites Cohn several times, approvingly, for Cohn's descriptions of the positions adopted by the various parties involved in the debate.

Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Fictional vs. Factual Narration in The Living Handbook of Narratology website:
http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/ind ... _Narration

That tells me that if a postmodern-right author (that's just the territory where the narratologists I had heard about in Munslow's book seem to lurk) can cite Cohn approvingly, then I cannot think that her criticisms of the postmodern POV could have been as crushingly painful as you suggest - unless they were directed at specific critics within the postmodern community, which is very wide and ranges from the most secular critics to religious-right types. They are not all the same.

Alun Munslow provides a general introduction to the approaches to history adopted by all sorts of modernists and postmodernists. The title "Deconstructing History" is a nod towards the Deconstructionist school of historians, in the sense that "If you deconstructionists can dish it out when evaluating the work of their peers, how about me deconstruction you as historians?" He is very neutral, I think, towards those he describes, so one's "spider sense" will not go off all the time, making the read a drag. But there is a LOT of technical language, although I believe he provided a dictionary at the end.

Stephen Moore, for his part, described one of the dangers he discovered in the narrative based school. For a time Moore, a Christian of what we usually call the moderate-liberal range of the religious spectrum, found the "new literary criticism" of the New testament (mainly Narrative Criticism coupled with Reader-Response Criticism) to be a way out of the dissonance he felt after his adoption of Historical Criticism some years beforehand. "Soon, however, a sneaking suspicion began to creep up on me ...: What if narrative criticism were actually a retreat from the critical rigor of historical scholarship? What if its not inconsiderable success were due to a widespread weariness with 'the unrest and difficulty for Christian piety' caused by centuries of historical criticism?" (Moore, Post Structuralism and the New Testament, 1994, p.115, and yes, I admit to being old and dusty).

Let me slowly, but somewhat surely, see what I can do to learn more about Cohn's POV about the subject of author-narrator divide. Somehow I think this is getting mixed up with the true vs. real issue in distinguishing historians from authors of fiction ("true" = what actually happened, and "real" = a writer's intuitive perception of something - anything really - in this case committed to writing as fiction). Maybe it's related, I don't know ...

DCH

[DCHindley]

For those with interest, here is a peer review of Dorrit Cohen's The Distinction of Fiction by James Phelan.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/21445

Turns out she is a postmodernist herself, but disagrees with those who say that the narrative of the historian, despite use of the same tropes, plots, etc., as fiction writers fictional writing, can still be distinguished from fiction by means of linguistic clues.

More to come.

Hi ho.

DCH

[neilgodfrey]

...

Does not this point confuse the fanciful beliefs of historical actors with the question of the actors and events being fantasy?

The story of Jesus is told in a brief narrative , gospel of Mark, which describes the conflict between a reformer and a religious authority . The story was told by a reformer . There is evidence that there were changes to the liturgy of the target religion .And that those changes were made by a self preserving priesthood.The conclusion is that research on the beginnings of Christianity seems to be on the right path and that money should be directed to people qualified for this research in preference to other projects.


A religious researcher would need only to find more evidence , but an unbeliever researcher would have to clear his/her mind of the obfuscating belief that religious eccentrics can never be real people .

I don't know what you're trying to say. Of course religious eccentrics are real -- and many. Are you sure you followed my own comment?