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Historical Novel

A historical novel is a novel that takes place against the background of an episode (sometimes major) of History , which he mixes generally happened-characters-real and fictitious. The historical novel appeared in the late seventeenth century with the main authors of Madame Lafayette and Caesar Vichard Saint-Ral. The historical novel attempts to appear credible in light of historical truth and the author is generally based on extensive documentation.

The first study addressing gender is, in 1898, the historical novel in the romantic era of Louis Maigron, which underlines the decisive contribution of the historical novels of Walter Scott in the development of the modern novel. In 1937 appears the famous essay of literary sociology of Georg Lukcs : The historical novel.

Summary

The example of ancient Roman or ancient

The founding fathers

If the novel refers often ancient novels actually written in the ancient times (among the best known and rarely preserved: the Satyricon attributed to Petronius , a courtier of Nero , and The Golden Ass of Apuleius , also a citizen of Roman Empire), the ancient novel is a specific variety of historical romance that flourished after the explosion of the historical novel in the nineteenth century (medieval romance first) initiated by Walter Scott.

For specific current of the novel to the ancient and even more specifically French, Walter Scott appears late. Quite apart from L'Astre of Honor d'Urf (compare to Ossian ), The Martyrs of Chateaubriand , published in 1809, is set in ancient Rome and discusses the beginnings of Christianity.

After an eclipse, the romantic novel ancient resurfaced among aesthetes, manic style and historical detail: The Last Days of Pompeii (The Last Days of Pompeii) of Columbia Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1834, also occultist and author of sci- fiction ) describes a city left to its decadent demons; The Romance of the mummy of Theophile Gautier (1858, the singer of "art for art's also author of the new Arria Marcella , who raises a beauty of a tourist Pompeii English and contrasts the beautiful pagan to his Christian father and a night of Cleopatra ) depicts Ramses and Moses in Thebes idyllic Salammbo of Gustave Flaubert (1862, which raises critical catastrophic - the genre he seems tired by its excess) between the powerful Carthage to barbarians. The last two especially first subscribe to the exercise of descriptive style, combining prose and poetry closely, reaching a new kind of preciousness. Except in his work mainly dedicated to the story (most recent) of France, Acte of Alexandre Dumas (1837) was a slave to heroin and favorite of Nero that stood alone with the tyrant after his fall.

Can it be said that Fabiola by Cardinal Wiseman and Ben-Hur by General Lew Wallace (1880) fall within the ideological firebrand ... As Quo vadis? the Polish Henryk Sienkiewicz (1896), they expose each, through the beginnings of Christianity and the clash of cultures and classes, a concept (political, religious, nationalist ...) in the world and history conditioned by its author. All three show the same time as the romance is not dead as Ben-Hur (and Spartacus ) is a typical romantic hero, fallible and tormented, and love complicated by the difference of religion is the main argument two other novels. Quo Vadis? (Latin expression meaning "where are you going?" and a word borrowed from the Gospels ) and earning its author the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Lombard , proletarian, trade unionist and "anarchist", yet aesthetic, not experience a similar fate. In 1888 he published The Agony in the reign of Heliogabalus - prefaced by Octave Mirbeau at its reissue in 1901 - and 1890 Byzantium which runs in the eighth century - a preface by Paul Margueritte in 1901.

An echo of this

A second type seems to mark the eclipse in the early twentieth century, although the ancient remains an obligatory reference in art and in all of Western culture (fashion by Sonia Delaunay inspired by ancient Egypt).

During the Belle Epoque Paris seems that the capital of ancient Greece by Frederick Martinez , Prosper Castanier took over the "ancient romance" after the Virgin of Babylon (1898), he published The Courtesan Memphis (1900), The Orgy The daughter of Roman and Croesus (1901) or The Lotus of the Ganges (1903) who tries to biography of the founder of Buddhism. But the genre has lived his finest hours as evidenced by an article by Martinez - Fake as the antique or the ambiguities of neoclassicism, 2008 - which has the subtitle "by Gustave Flaubert Prosper Castanier: rise and fall of ancient novel "ancient fiction would become (but that's nothing new, far from it) Sanctuary aesthetes" heartbroken by the modern world "and now as bad press that academic painting as Gerome and Cabanel ...

It was not until the 1930's difficult to see resurrect the ancient novel. Still Me, Claude / I, Claudius of Columbia Robert Graves (1934) it seems (like the memoirs of Agrippina of Pierre Grimal ) the result of a large research Latinist applied to novel or more relaxation than a reflection concerns a man of modern times. It emphasizes the fundamental ambiguity of historical fiction, which widens as it recedes in time and space. Echoing the conventional plots of the first Roman imperial family, the Julio-Claudian, (told since ancient times by Tacitus and Suetonius ) Graves leaves the reader free to escape into another world, or to transpose the past into the present. The Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz in turn has put all his youthful poetry in the service of storytelling Pharaohs Curse of Ra (1939) which takes place during the reign of Khufu. And what about the great Thomas Mann pushing forward the four volumes of Joseph and his brothers from 1933 to 1943 ...

Some books are more explicit than others. Thus the Spartacus of Arthur Koestler (1938) is compared with the Spartacus of Howard Fast (1951). Thus the heroes of Sinuhe the Egyptian by the Finn Mika Waltari (1945, also author of The Etruscan - Roman initiation in the Mediterranean, 1955 - Lovers and Byzantine) and Barabbas Swede Pr Lagerkvist (1950, also author of The Sibylle taking place in the first century) are they a modern Pharaoh or Jesus , with their knowledge or their ignorance of the problems facing ordinary "omnitemporels" their extraordinary destiny conditioning fiction. The British Thornton Wilder recounts the death of Julius Caesar , classic theme in The Ides of March in 1948. In contrast to each other it seems, the borders of the Soviet Ecumenical Ivan Efremov (1949) and Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (1951) have in common a quest for truth Efremov building, through the story of a slave revolt in Egypt a thousand years before Christ, a hymn to freedom and equality of peoples, and Yourcenar, through the intimate thoughts and philosophical love of Roman Emperor, recalling the meticulousness of a Flaubert in the psychological recovery.

Women and children

Caius The Case of the German Henry Winterfeld (1953), murder mystery in the Rome of antiquity, is a classic of literature aimed at young audiences. Exotic and familiar rhythm to the investigation of a group of schoolchildren in the imperial capital and pagan. In the same vein, John Severin (who then turned to Vercingetorix , Vauban and Lady Hamilton ) takes his readers in The Sun of Olympia (1967) in full games where rival Athenians and Spartans , the truce was broken in their war. The ancient novel is experiencing a new avatar from the pen of Andree Chedid with ( Nefertiti and the dream of Akhenaten : the memoirs of a scribe (1974). Three years later, The Lady of the Nile , first novel Pauline Gedge (of the pharaoh Hatshepsut and her brother in exile in Crete ), a great success.

Following fate I Zenobia , queen of Palmyra in Simiot Bernard (1978), another tribute to a woman who made history old - look rather neglected so far. Subsequently, Imhotep of Montlaur Pierre (1985) weaves the love of the scholar and prime minister of the deified pharaoh Djoser. The novel is associated with the old sentimental novel whose style tends (but it is a general trend) to poorer instead of purify. The genre seems to attract fewer authors who are reaping the laurels of criticism - there are exceptions, but are they justified ...

Nropolis: a novel of modern times

The Master of the steppes (1981) is the first book of Daniel Kircher , which marks the genre with Wrath of the Gods, who happens 2500 years before Jesus Christ in Crete , and back to Carthage - among others. Nropolis: novel Times Neronian (1984) is a splendid foray Monteilhet Hubert , author of policemen especially in a novel in the ancient modern and bold, which revisits somehow Quo Vadis? by erasing its appearance Holy Sulpician closer to Suetonius that of Tacitus. The Kingdom of the Unbelievers Columbia Anthony Burgess , author important (and prolific) of the twentieth century , adopts a similar tone, iconoclastic and insolent as two of his previous work, the long narrative poem Moses ( Moses ) and the novel Man of Nazareth, The Kingdom of the Wicked anticipated (or preparing) a scenario here that the series AD / Anno Domini. In the case of film adaptations, as for the latter, the novel is redacted. Only the emergence of independent channels and pay ( HBO top) could allow adjustments faithful but the experience of the series Rome (too expensive) bars the path. In the same vein realistic, but with less magnitude, Franoise Xenakis tackles the most famous queen of Egypt with Fly up Cleopatra.

Fantasy exoticism and poetry

More recently the Australian Colleen McCullough has embarked on the monumental Masters of Rome (since 1991) that includes seven volumes to date, showing the depravity of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. And what about Christian Jacq whose "Egyptian work" seems to cover the entire history of the pharaohs and their gods ... The American Anne Rice , a great fantasy writer, has also, through its vampires , visited the ancient civilizations, and author of science fiction Robert Silverberg revisited in Gilgamesh , king of Uruk (1984) illustrated epic Sumerian as memories of imaginary heroes ... In regards late antiquity and eastern two examples: Michael of Greece confesses the Empress Theodora of Byzantium in The Palace of Tears (1988), and when a Dutchman, Robert van Gulik , a passion for China , this gives sixteen stories police unscrambled by the Judge Dee in the seventh century - in this ancient and medieval fluctuate ...

The novel belongs to the most ancient adventure story today (too emotional) and is less close to the experimental and the aesthetic of a period that seems to be over. Towards the commitment remains free. The share of historical accuracy and novelty remains to be determined. Why not a novel written by ancient Umberto Eco or Brett Easton Ellis.

Walter Scott and a handful of classical or medieval romance medieval (depending on novelists and their meanings), XV century included

The Scot Walter Scott became illustrious in the country through Waverley (1814) and Rob Roy (1817) who embroider on the struggles of the Jacobites to restore the Stuarts in Scotland after 1688. When it launches in the medieval romance, the triumph of Ivanhoe (1819) and Quentin Durward (1823) launches a European fashion , "write about them Vindt Gerard and Nicole Giraud.

The White Company of Arthur Conan Doyle (1891) is not the only incursion of the creator of Sherlock Holmes in the historical novel. It combines "Hundred Years War and English humor," closer Don Quixote (whose ghost haunts the long modern romance of chivalry) that Bayard. In 1930, Herman Hesse publishes a (long) ode to tolerance with Narcissus and Goldmund , which describes a relationship between intellectual and loving monks.

Another major, Maurice Druon published seven volumes of his saga cursed Kings from 1955 to 1977, which attaches at the end of the Capetian kings and prime Valois of France. Another author sum, Italian Umberto Eco instills a criminal intrigue in a Benedictine Abbey: The Name of the Rose (1980) was also a huge public and critical success - and will also be adapted screen reference. The two best sellers are their intrigue in the fourteenth century, when apprehended in two different meanings. Eco also publishes Baudolino in 2000, taking place in the twelfth century in the Italian Piedmont.

These examples emphasize the prestigious Europe and the late Middle Ages. Other authors have adopted different views as Amin Maalouf in Samarkand (1988), fictionalized biography of the poet and scientist Omar Khayyam in the twelfth century, or the Italian Gabriella Magrini who embroiders on the life of the famous Murasaki Shikibu and the Japan of the 10th and 11th centuries in The Queen of Kyoto (1985).

For fun again, we must add to these essential saga Police Cadfael , a Benedictine monk and former Welsh cross, but also a doctor and formidable sleuth, hero of twenty novels and three stories written by British Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter) to Beginning in the 1970s.

From the Renaissance to the empire of Napoleon

Patrons prestigious

Early in the nineteenth century , the historical novel about this period (according to a necessarily arbitrary cut) has the honor of the greatest: in Germany , Heinrich von Kleist , one of the most important romantic writers, described in Michael Kohlhaas (1810) his country at the time of Martin Luther - a jockey for heroes. In France , Cinq-Mars, or a conspiracy under Louis XIII of Alfred de Vigny (1826) and 1572, chronicle the time of Charles IX of Prosper Merimee (1829) also, because of their authors, at the crossroads of the reconstitution year literary and contemporary issues.

Comes another giant of the historical novel (with Walter Scott ): Alexandre Dumas sign a rich oeuvre which covers much of the history of France, among others the reigns of Charles IX and Henry III in La Reine Margot (1845), La Dame de Monsoreau (1846), The Forty-Five (1847), The Three Musketeers (1844), Le Comte de Moret , Twenty Years After (1845) and The Three Musketeers (1848) is shared between the England of Charles I. and France of Louis XIII. The Black Tulip (1850) raises the Netherlands in 1672.

The bullies

Scott and Dumas have launched a sustainable and popular genre: the romance of swashbuckling. Amedee Achard appreciated by Arthur Rimbaud , Paul Feval with famed Hunchback (1858), whose plot takes place in 1699 and 1717, and even the melancholy Captain Fracasse of Parnassian Theophile Gautier (1863, or the adventures of a ruined aristocrat disguised as an actor in the reign of Louis XIII), among others, perpetuate a mythology heroic and romantic. Later, The Scarlet Pimpernel (The Scarlet Pimpernel) whose saga has nine spy novels written by Baroness Orczy UK published in 1903 invented a secret society, founded in 1792 to help victims of the Terror in France, besides the illustrious Ponson Terrail , Michel Zvaco with the series of Pardaillan beginning in 1907 (and the short reign of Henry II to that of Louis XIII) was admired by Sartre. Scaramouche of Italo-English Rafael Sabatini , whose argument is close to the Captain Fracasso, is freely inspired by the life of Tiberio Fiorelli during the French Revolution.

Revolution, frivolity and bitterness in France

Helped by his negroes , Dumas also addresses the eighteenth century through the Regency (in the chevalier in 1842) and Revolution in: Joseph Balsamo (1846), The Queen's Necklace (1849), Ange Pitou (1851 ), La Comtesse de Charny (1853), The Knight of Maison-Rouge (1845-1846, on the Terror ), The Whites and the Blues (1867, inspired by Charles Nodier on the Civil War), The Companions of Jehu ( 1856) which deals with the White Terror. La San Felice (1863) takes place in Italy at the time of Napoleon. Yet only The Count of Monte Cristo (1845-1846), modern novel can compete with the Three Musketeers in the works of Dumas.

The Revolution had previously inspired Balzac for the Chouans in 1829, the writer is fond of historical fiction, because in Lost Illusions , Rubempre wrote a novel called The Archer of Charles IX. In 1835 and 1839, is a historical novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin for the one, The Charterhouse of Parma for the other, which brings fame to Gautier and Stendhal and the two very different authors (although two virtuoso style) have opposite approaches: Gautier mixes Shakespeare , the debauchery and the war in a world almost pagan while Stendhal relates to a less ancient past a dark look and bitter.

The destinies of peoples

The young writers of the United States of North America offer the kind two classics that are more closely by their pessimism: Fenimore Cooper , the former marine, and Nathaniel Hawthorne , the former customs official, show each of them lived young country, one celebrates nature in The Last of the Mohicans (1826), second of five books that form the ring Stories Down Leather- situated during the Seven Years War in the mid- eighteenth century , the Another presents a severe indictment against the city of Puritan Boston in the seventeenth century in The Scarlet Letter (1850).

Across Europe, the French Revolution (Reference all resistance and revolutions, of all excesses, too) and Napoleon (another revolution, for better or for worse) inspire great writers who analyze their turbulent century in light of these two changes: Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) describes Paris and London in 1793, Quatre-Vingt-Treize (1874) precisely to Victor Hugo , and another reflection of national culture, by iron and by fire , the first novel in a trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz in the years 1884-1888, one of the largest Polish classics taking place in Ukraine in the seventeenth century , belong to this literary movement, between epic and chronicle , as varied its singers casual repeated for War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869, the Napoleonic campaigns of 1805 and 1812) until Napoleon cycle of Arthur Conan Doyle - in 1892 The Great Shadow , in 1896 The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard based on the life of a General of the Empire in 1897 Uncle Bernac / A drama of Napoleon 1st, 1903 The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard. The new century does not stop this fascination in 1912, as seems the gods are thirsty , one of the last novels of Anatole France , whose plot is under the Terror - a period that has particularly caught the imagination of novelists. Henry Rider Haggard , against the current, published in 1891 The daughter of Montezuma , imaginary memory of a noble old English writing on the application of Elizabeth I.

Human

In the twentieth century , however, the Europe seems to favor the Renaissance , which may be contradictions between trade and conflict between knowledge and obscurantism, recall the difficulties of the present. But the degree of political involvement of the author depends on his project as well as his personality and does not affect quality. Between homage and irreverence, The Romance of Henri IV of Heinrich Mann (1935-1938), the realist Le Tigre blue of Dblin (1938, on Indian communities created by the Jesuits in Paraguay , and More Things Change / The Mandrake by William Somerset Maugham (1946, comedy whose hero Machiavelli ) visit the continent's history and its colonies. The Abyss of Marguerite Yourcenar (1968), A Meeting in Westphalia (Das Treffen in Telgte) by Gnter Grass ( 1981, which imagines a meeting between men of letters, mostly real, from all over Germany in 1647, at the end of the Thirty Years War), Leo Africanus of Franco-Lebanese Amin Maalouf (1986, fictionalized biography of Hassan al-Wazzan, a businessman, diplomat and writer Arabo-Andalusian) are working for reconciliation. The third receives the price of the Franco-Arab Friendship. In the melancholic Captain Alatriste (1996) of Spanish Arturo Prez- Reverte , it is the wars between Spain and the Netherlands are discussed. On a more intimate, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999) based on the table Vermeer to invent an identity for its model against a background of social and religious rivalries.

The same spirit of conciliation anime The Jew Sss (1925) by Lion Feuchtwanger , whose hero is evolving at the court of Wrttemberg in the eighteenth century. Feuchtwanger is also the author of Le Roman de Goya (1951) who painted the Spain of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Later, John Steinbeck chooses for his first novel, a href = "La_coupe_d% 27or" class = "mw-redirect" title = "The Golden Bowl"> The Golden Bowl (1929), to draw the adventures of the pirate Henry Morgan. In Italy , new aesthetes interested in the eighteenth century : Leonardo Sciascia in The Council of Egypt in 1963 (which sets up a fake history in Palermo ), and Italo Calvino in The Baron in the Trees - which has as much to do with philosophical tale with the novel. The rain drums of Ismail Kadare , published in Albanian in 1970 under the title Kshtjella (The Citadel) says the seat of an Albanian fortress by the Turks in the fifteenth century , Umberto Eco is The Island of the Day Before (L'isola del giorno prima) published in 1994 in the seventeenth century in the open ocean Pacific , Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1989 recounts the last days of Simon Bolivar in The General in His Labyrinth. Marquez, Eco Kadare and three contemporary humanists.

Modern and popular

The historical novel which deals with old regimes continues to draw crowds, particularly through the sentimental novel says, often erotic and very well documented. Amber by Kathleen Winsor , published in 1944 with success in the U.S. and in France in 1946, uncompromising portrait during the reign of Charles II , an adventurer, little sister of Moll Flanders. In France, the series erotic comic darling Caroline , signed by Cecil Saint-Laurent from 1947 to 1951, which takes place during the Revolution, then the saga of Anglique, Marquise of the Angels of Anne Golon (thirteen volumes from 1957 to 1985 of Poitou in Quebec through Versailles and the harem of Moulay Ismail , sultan of Morocco ), or series of Juliette Benzoni ( The Gerfaut , 1976-1981, for example) are exploring the path of romance by turns whimsical and realistic, cynical or idealistic. King's Walk of Chandernagore Franoise (1981) falls within the tradition of imaginary memories, choosing the most mysterious heroine favorite of Louis XIV (with Angela): Madame de Maintenon. Winsor, Golon, Chandernagore compose hymns to all womanhood, femininity strong, complex and complete, and Annie Krieger-Krynicki , author of Zbunissa , a princess trapped in the court of Grand Mogul (1990), courtyard located in India and contemporary with that of Louis XIV.

Men do not give much for the historical novel of the Old Regime. These gentlemen from St. Malo to Simiot Bernard wins a prize from the French Academy in 1983, and The Pillars of the sky of Bernard Clavel , five volumes devoted to seventeenth century (the Franche-Comte in the New World ) from 1976 to 1981, is a classic of the author, Fortune de France of Robert Merle published from 1977 to 2003 covers the religious wars from 1547 to 1661, all portraits classes that are enriched or fleeing poverty and oppression, photographs from a time and place, hymns to the daring (or survival success) always. Michael of Greece takes the pen to write the memoirs of Aimee Dubuc Rivers, cousin of the future Empress Josephine , born in Martinique in the late eighteenth century, captured by Barbary pirates at the age of fifteen years and provided by the Dey of Algiers to the Sultan of Constantinople - The Night Serail (1984).

Source: The Great Historical Novels Vindt Gerard and Nicole Giraud, Bordas , 1991

Some historical novels

In the nineteenth century





In the twentieth century










In the twenty-first century

References

  1. Vindt Gerard, Nicole Girard, The Great Historical Fiction: history through novels, Bordas, 1991, p. 39.
  2. Vindt Gerard, Nicole Giraud, op. cit., p. 46.

Bibliography

  • George Lukacs, The Historical Novel, Payot, September 7, 2000, 410 p. ;
  • Peyrache-Dominique Leborgne, The historical novel, Spotlight, November 3, 2000, 358 p. ;
  • Gerard Gengembre, the historical novel, Klincksieck, January 21, 2006, 160 p. ;
  • Brigitte Krulic, Twilight of the historical novel: intrigue, heroes and femmes fatales, Otherwise, May 3, 2007, 253 p. ;
  • Isabelle Durand-Le Guern, The historical novel, Armand Colin, 2008, 127 p.
  • Great Historical Novels Vindt Gerard and Nicole Giraud, Bordas , 1991

Related articles

External Links

Notes

  1. Vindt Gerard, Nicole Girard, The Great Historical Fiction: history through novels, Bordas, 1991, p. 39.
  2. Vindt Gerard, Nicole Giraud, op. cit., p. 46.

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