8 - Historical Friction: Constructing Pastness in Fiction Set in Eleventh-Century England

Summary

Scholarly discussion of the Middle Ages in historical fiction has frequently been framed in terms of the ways in which authors draw upon or make use of medieval texts to inform their writing, or else has tended to focus on the historical authenticity (or lack thereof) of given works. Indeed there is a widespread popular and critical fascination with what Jerome de Groot calls the ‘historicalness’ of historical fiction: that is to say, its relationship to history and the extent to which it depicts the past in a historically faithful manner. Novelists themselves have often encouraged these lines of investigation by stressing their commitments and feelings of responsibility in this respect, and regularly make claims regarding the historical accuracy of their work (consistency with events and chronology) and its authenticity (sensitivity towards the texture of life in their chosen period). When considering how the Middle Ages are depicted in historical fiction, however, it is important to keep in mind the wider narrative strategies, approaches and objectives into which the treatment of medieval texts and history is enfolded. Critical discussion of these strategies, approaches and objectives is urgently needed, as de Groot points out: ‘It is uncommon still for scholarship to look seriously at the ways in which historical fictions might work […] research into historical fiction has been bedevilled by an overriding concern about the historicalness of such work’ (italics in the original). As we shall see, the visions of the Middle Ages – in this case specifically eleventh-century England – that are constructed by historical novelists frequently approach and render the period in ways that owe little to contemporary source material, and indeed are not much concerned with history in the formal, academic sense of that word.

In this chapter, I bring a practice-based perspective to the study of historical fiction set in eleventh-century England, examining the various strategies by which novelists construct what I call ‘pastness’. Whereas de Groot’s term ‘historicalness’ refers to how a text embodies, represents or otherwise makes use of history, pastness can be defined as the feeling of the past generated by a work of fiction: a feeling that is characterised by the meaning(s) attributed to that past, and by the emotional and psychological effects that it exerts.