“On Historical Fiction” by Arnold J Toynbee

 

What is it that we are looking for in other people's lives when we find ourselves wanting to read about them in histories or biographies or novels? If other people's experiences are to hold our attention, they must excite our curiosity; and, for that, they must be different enough from our own experiences to be interesting, but not so different as to be incomprehensible.

This is an unusual offering. It is the introduction to a 1954 book of historical fiction about the Viking Age titled The Foster Brothers by Edward Frankland [retitled The Long Swords in 1956.]

The untitled introduction is by legendary historian Arthur Toynbee, author of the still interesting 12-volume A Study of History.

Here, the noted historian makes the case for historical fiction [and he does cover the Western in his definition] as being of prime value for the student of history. He goes beyond that commendation to say that we as human beings can become more temporally linked to our forebears by the skillful humanization of former eras.

More from Toynbee.

Here we have our fellow men and women of the Heroic Age painted for us in their true colors. But, granting that this picture does arouse our curiosity, why, one might ask, should one go to find it in a work of fiction but why not go to some historian’s reconstruction of life in the Heroic Age from the original literature that the Heroic Age has bequeathed to us? The answer lies in the nature of historical records, for these often fail to tell us directly just the things that we most want to know, especially the most intimate things about personal relations and experiences. That is why the people of this Historic Age, who were infant prodigies as well as juvenile delinquents, chose to immortalize themselves, not in blue books or white papers, but in epics and sagas in which historical facts have been transmuted into fiction, as Vandal smiths used to meltdown Roman coins and forged the gold into torques and bracelets for the embellishment of disreputable barbarian warriors.

Here, he sounds almost wistful at the tools the fictioneer can command as opposed to his bounded set.

This freedom to recreate the landscape of a past age, and to people it with intimate personal life, the author has resources which are not at a historian's command; and we need all the resources that can be offered to us if we are to enter imaginatively into the lives of other men and women in other times and places. This is always worth doing, because our common humanity involves us in the lives of all our fellow human beings who have ever lived. The Roman playwright Terence makes one of his characters say: “As a human being, I am a party to every jot of human experience.” This is surely a saying which we should all take to heart.

I, as an avid historical fiction reader found this introduction illuminating and perhaps revelatory as to the “why” of my tastes. As an author, it strikes me that the historical novelist may find this outside view from Toynbee heartening and inspiring and perhaps a spur to better work.