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The Trap of Fairytale Victory Endings in Historical Fiction
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sb057 3y ago“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single war. What are the odds?” -Norm MacDonald
- drekipus 3y agoThis is one of my favourite Norm MacDonald quotes
- watwut 3y agoHistory books do not actually say that. The article is about historical fiction.
- kikokikokiko 3y agoIf you are alive in 2023 and you haven't yet noticed, ALL history is historical fiction. Imagine how easy it is to create a mainstream narrative that doesn't fit the facts today. Now go back in time to the forties, when you had 3 newspapers and two radio stations "of record". Now go back to 1800. To 300 A.D. History is the fairy tale story of the rulling classes. Always.
- bazoom42 3y agoReal historians apply source criticism though. Historical fiction on the other hand often embrace the myths since since they tend to make for bettet stories.
- hef19898 3y agoThat is exactly what history isn't so. History, as written by historians, is applying source criticism to primary sources. that understanding changes over time. What you describe is meme-based pop history at best. WW2 history based on WW2 Generals' memoir's, as opposed to unit diaries, is a prime example of that trap.
- jvanderbot 3y agoYou're right. But what was described isn't pop history, that trivializes the magnitude of its impact. For most the world most of the time for all of history, that _was_ how the past was understood. And today, we still understand the present this way, and it takes time to gather critical sources and discover truth, and hopefully record it.
- Amezarak 3y ago> History, as written by historians, is applying source criticism to primary sources. Unfortunately, most "source criticism" is absolutely atrocious and developed primarily as part of the publish-or-perish paradigm, of such low quality that "X was motivated to believe Y, therefore Y was probably not true" without additional evidence is a common theme. Perhaps worse, much of our modern "source criticism" simply consists of applying whatever moralizing ideological lens is currently in vogue. Even historiography is largely fad-driven. You can absolutely learn more about historical events by reading the primary sources yourself. Historians are not blessed with some rare critical talent that can only be developed via a history degree. It's obviously true that reading only WW2 general memoirs is going to get you a very specific and limited view, but they aren't the only people who were writing at the time, and either way, within the limited parameters of military history, it's better to read what someone actually thought rather than reading what someone else thought they thought. Of course you will sometimes be misled, but at least you'll be misled in similar ways to people of the time, rather than being misled by 21st-century ideas. That's not to say there are no good modern histories, but the best are ones that quote very, very liberally and give you lists of the best primary sources, which you should still read.
- hef19898 3y ago
- watwut 3y agoYeah, it really sounds like you did not read history books. Also, the forties left huge amount of evidence behind them. History books are not based primary nor solely on "papers of record". These are just one of many used data points. Meanwhile, historical fiction is explicitly fiction. As in it is supposed to be made up and readers are aware of that.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> As in it is supposed to be made up and readers are aware of that. Good historical fiction goes deeper than good, sourced, "factual" history. Proper history depends on written records; but those records were made exclusively by people who are literate (obviously), which for most of history was a tiny minority. A lot of historical fiction is indeed made-up stuff, based on a conventional version of history, telling tales we all (think we) know. The good stuff is made-up too, of course; but it's heavily researched, and informative. I'm thinking of stuff like Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth.
- hef19898 3y agoOne falsehood is that people through out history were illiterate. The second is to see historical fiction as anything ddifferent from fantasy, science fiction or other forms of entertainment. History =|= historical story telling Ken Follet wrote a novel about building a cathedral, he didn'r write a book about medival cathedral building. Very important difference.
- watwut 3y ago> lot of historical fiction is indeed made-up stuff All of it is made up. That is why it is called fiction. Authors are pretty open about that fact. It can not possibly "go deeper" then sourced factual history - because it uses sourced history as its only source of information about past. Historical fiction writers read a lot of sourced history and then combine, modify, remove and add to make compeling story that would satisfy the audience.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
- barrysteve 3y agoYour comment is made up. Made up doesn't have to mean false. The facts are fake-able too. Subtle mis-interpretations can be all that's needed to lead a perfectly true narrative, astray. The line between myth and fact, can be very finely sliced indeed. There is not a single academic field free from fictionalizing Key aspects of the narrative to put someone in a more favourable light. Unfortunately.
- aredox 3y agoThat's just completely false: Spanish civil war Invasion of Poland Stalin's victory in WWII The Talibans Iran-Iraq war Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire The Crusades Etc, etc, etc...
- gumby 3y agoThe meaning of MacDonald‘s quip whooshed over your head. Read it again.
- Spivak 3y agoNo it didn't, it's a cute quip trying to play on how history is written by the winners but his version isn't actually true. There are plenty of examples where it's generally agreed that the "bad guys" won. Even if you try to read it as good bad being subjective I don't think there's any fixed lens though which a history book would interpret the winners being the good guys in every conflict. The bad guys for sure won the Iraq war.
- menzoic 3y agoYou also missed it. There will be varying accounts, but history written by the “bad guys” will frame things differently to make them seem like the good guys.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> There will be varying accounts, but history written by the “bad guys” will frame things differently to make them seem like the good guys. That's true, but since they frequently lose, that produces a lot of history showing that the good guys lost.
- LeafItAlone 3y agoWhat you seem to be interpreting the quote as (and likely what it truly is intended to mean) is: “We have been the good guys in every single war.” Rather than “ the good guys have won every single war”. At least in my history books in school growing, my country was framed as the good guys and listed wars we lost.
- empath75 3y agoThis tends to be true on the scale of nations, but not necessarily at the scale of the individual. People who wrote histories (before the advent of history as we know it today) were frequently people who were forced out of power after some personal failure or through no fault of their own, and then wrote a history defending themselves. https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/ https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/
- Animats 3y agoThe main fairytale trap is heroes. "Wars are won by the average performance of the line units." - Field Marshall the Viscount Slim. "The legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the legion kills." - Roman saying.
- OscarCunningham 3y agoNo way is that a real Roman saying.
- getmoheb 3y agoFWIW, a quick google turned up only three results for that phrase, each of which was from Animats, but on Slashdot. Cool phrase, even if it's apparently not that old
- Animats 3y agoIt's from a novel, I think. It reflects battle results of legions against barbarians. One on one, the barbarians could win. A formed legion could take on a larger group of barbarians and win. See Gallic Wars. Google's coverage of books is worse than it used to be. Search results from old books don't come up much any more.
- Balgair 3y agoNon composita legio heroum. Heroes sunt quos legio necat. (Please tell me how I'm butchering my Latin here, still learning!) Yeah, I get nothing from a quick search too. I wouldn't even think to know who would have said something so mundane about the legions. Cesar would never have said something like that. The closest that I can think of would be Pompey, but such a saying would have been too glib even for him.
- justin66 3y ago> Cesar would never have said something like that. I expect "don't be a hero" would be a very, very common sentiment expressed to a legionnaire during his training. It's a little more pithy than "hold the line or you'll get killed and fuck things up for everybody else."
- leobg 3y agoTangential: What’s a WWII novel that you enjoyed, that made you think, impressed you by being well researched, or all of the above?
- nwatson 3y ago"Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" by Herman Wouk. Written in the 1970s, from the perspective of a Jewish-American family. He also earlier wrote Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Caine Mutiny" in 1951, it was a good book but not as enjoyable as the other two. He fought in the Pacific Theater during WWII and so lived it. (I also remember his 1948 "City Boy" being a hilarious tale of a Jewish kid growing up in NYC/The Bronx.)
- AlbertCory 3y agoI cited Wouk's books elsewhere in this thread. Since it's fiction, he has the opportunity to show what people thought then without benefit of hindsight. And he takes full advantage of it. Even the fictional German general Armin von Roon gets plenty of space to give the German perspective.
- jhp123 3y agoRed Sorghum is fantastic. Set in a Chinese village, it's a perspective I had really no idea about. It's very well written as well, in a matter-of-fact style that seems to translate well.
- stevenwoo 3y agoNot a novel but The Good War by Studs Terkel. It’s the antidote to fairy tale historical accounts of WW2.
- stodor89 3y agoJust gonna point out there's a significant difference between proper fairy tales and adapted (aka butchered) fairy tales.
- rini17 3y agoPerhaps some day we will invent a society that does not require fairytale founding myth.
- steve76 3y ago[dead]