Historical Fiction

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Historical Fiction

• Out of the Dust

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Important Points

• Breathes life into what people may have
  considered irrelevant and dull.
• Implies the present is a part of the living past.
  Connects the struggles of past to the present
• Readers can feel the time period. (History
  textbooks dont help readers make personal
  connections with the past.)
• Sugar coating? Watch out!
• The two biggest challenges to historical
  accuracy.
• Nostalgia are usually inaccurate.
• Anachronisms reduce verisimilitude.
• History seen through the eyes of a young
  protagonist.

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History in context

• In what context is history presented?
• As growth (more common in American ChLit)
• Were climbing toward improvement
• We have problems because were making progress
• Things are getting better. We are better people
  than people in the past.
• Learned from farming mistakes so Dust Bowl wont
  happen again
• As cycle (more common in European ChLit)
• History repeats itself
• We dont always learn from the past
• We are no better than our parents
• Things will return to normal (Number the Stars p.
  132)
• Seasonal divisions.

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History as a social corrective

• Theres been a move in the last 20 years in
  Western historical literature (America
  especially) to make themselves look bad. A
  historical corrective.
• Use of literature to admit wrongdoing.
• Helps to alleviate guilt. (native peoples,
  slavery, racism)
• Perhaps reading, studying, and thinking about
  racism can help to solve the problem.

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Accuracy in Historical novels

• When they convey a sense of nostalgia, they are
  generally inaccurate.
• Factual accuracy vs. generalized accuracy.
• Which details can be changed and which cannot?
• We can check weather statistics to see if the
  particular storms did occur on exactly the dates
  Billie Joe gives to them.
• Details about FDR and political situation.
• Historical novels used to educate and teach
• The best education we can get is from our own
  social culture
• Compare Out of the Dust with John Steinbecks The
  Grapes of Wrath.
• Writers of historical fiction need to watch out
  for anachronisms.

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Anachronism (anaagainst, chronotime)

• The utilization of an event, a person, and
  object, or language in a time when that event,
  person or object was not in existence.
• In a movie of the ancient Romans, the people
  cannot be wearing blue jeans, wrist watches, or
  glasses.
• In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo cannot talk about
  using email to keep in contact with her friends.
• We often get more of the values of the authors
  culture than the values of the culture being
  written about. We see the old culture through the
  lens of the modern author.
• Feminism, individualism, democracy, various
  political and religious ideas.

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Values

• Value statements are embedded in every work.
• What values do different characters have? And
  which values does the text support and critique?
• Strong sense of pride and honesty (returning
  incorrect change)
• Family relationship
• Husband-wife relationship
• Mother is a person of few words. Too much praise
  spoils children.
• Poor help the poor. Generosity.
• Too much entertainment is dangerous.
• Children should focus on studies

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The Dust Bowl 1933-1936

• In pictures
• How do these images fit with your ideas
• after reading?

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The Dust Bowl Region
Cimarron County
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Dust Storms
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Effects of the Dust Storms
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Faces of the Great Depression
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Heading West (out of the dust)
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Farming in the Dustbowl
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Oklahoma Wheat Fields
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Harvesting wheat with a combine
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Harvesting Wheat with a Combine (around 1920)
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Tumbleweeds
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Soup lines full of men seeking free meals
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FDR Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt appealed to the
common people through the recently invented
radio. His New Deal brought hope to people
without money or work.
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The Dionne Quintuplets Such Fertility!
A freak show Extra babies when Billie Jos
family cant even get one more and so many other
families cant take care of their own.
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Bonnie and Clyde (famous criminals of the era)
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Poetry

• Its not just what is said, but how its said.
• Content and form are equal.

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Diction

• Word choice
• Consider connotations and denotations
• p. 3 With a wide mouth 1) talkative, 2) odd
  looking
• Latinate and Germanic Diction
• Poetry is often associated with fancy or
  elaborate vocabulary.
• Is French a more poetic language than German?
• This need not be the case. Hesse uses simple,
  clear, unpretentious language
• Much more Germanic or Anglo-Saxon than Latinate

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Latinate and Anglo-Saxon Diction

• Old English is Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) in its
  forms, structures, and vocabulary. But at around
  1100, the Normans invaded England causing French,
  a romance language (meaning it is derived from
  Latin) to mix with Old English. During the
  Renaissance (1400-1700), thousands more words
  were imported directly from Latin.
• For this reason, English today mixes Germanic and
  Latinate roots. Often we can find pairs of words,
  near synonyms, of which one comes from an
  Anglo-Saxon root and one from a Latinate root.
  Sometimes there are three closely related words,
  one each from Anglo-Saxon, from Latin via French,
  and directly from Latin, as in kingly (Germanic),
  royal (from French roi), and regal (from Latin
  rex, regis).
• As a (very rough) general rule, words derived
  from the Germanic ancestors of English are
  shorter, more concrete, and more direct, whereas
  Latinate words are longer and more abstract
  compare, for instance, the Anglo-Saxon thinking
  with the Latinate cogitation.
• Most bad language is of Anglo-Saxon ancestry
  compare, for instance, shit (Germanic) with
  excrement (Latinate).

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Germanic Latinate Germanic Latinate
anger, wrath rage, ire flood inundate
ask inquire friendly amicable
begin commence give provide
belief creed go depart
bodily corporal god deity
brotherly fraternal help assist
child infant hen poultry
come arrive hill mount
deadly mortal motherly maternal
earth soil new novel, modern
fatherly paternal shut close
first primary teach educate