Monday, October 26, 2009

History in Fiction...Or, is it Fiction in History? Hmm...

I followed someone else's link to this article, and found it partisan,
snarky and amusing---right up my alley. Maybe it'll be up yours
too. (Actually, that last part didn't sound right...)

This particular paragraph is academia to the nth degree:

The most scrupulous historian is an unreliable narrator;
he brings to the enterprise the biases of his training and
the vagaries of his personal temperament, and he is
often obliged, in order to make his name, to murder
his forefathers by coming up with a different take on events
from the one that held sway when he himself learned
the discipline; he must make the old new, because his
department's academic standing depends on it.

2 comments:

Lora said...

hi dan! just found your blog. how've you been? check out my blog for pics of the kids, clint, etc... take care,lora

Anonymous said...

Well, think about how history has been told differently throughout the ages. There are lots of times that the telling of history has been peppered with tones of sympath to society. Everyone (historians included) carry there own biasis, and if they tell you they don't, they're a liar.