Excellent videos on Versailles

The website for Versailles now offers excellent short videos on-line — called podcasts — in both English and French.

More on (historical) fact and fiction

I really liked this blog post: Fiction Versus History: Which is most truthful?

To quote:

What turns me off from traditional historical writing is the distance from which the story is told. When I pick up a book on a historical figure, I want that book to take me into the head space and emotional state of the person I’m reading about. Unfortunately most history books are unable to do that. They are told from the view point of the observer or researcher. And despite the historian’s best efforts to give the protagonist a personality, it always seems to fall short of what the real person must’ve been.

My alternative to history books has become historical fiction. They provide the depth and complexity of character that I crave as a reader and the historical background that I appreciate learning about.

Discovering the past is my main motivation for writing historical fiction. Research sparks me, but it’s only through delving deeply into the day-to-day lives of my characters that I even begin to understand.

The fuzzy line between fact and fiction

It disturbs me that “fiction” is getting such a bad rap in the U.S. press, that publishers feel they can’t market a novel, but that a “true” story is okay, that readers hunger for “truth” and will pay for it.

Since when has memoir been held to documentary standards? Memoir is a story created from life. I write historical fiction, and in delving into the research, I’ve come to see quite clearly that historians write fiction, as well. The line between fact and fiction is fuzzy, always, and I don’t understand this urge to nail it down. Facts can be misleading, and fiction can be revealing.

Story is how we explain the past—our history—to ourselves. Story is a powerful tool, and it is story that sets us apart from the world of animals (at least insofar as we know!).

Yet I’m guilty myself, I know. I love that “wow” moment when reading historical texts, thinking: Imagine—this actually happened. I think the issue is not whether something is true or false, but the understanding, the contract that is created between the author and reader. The outrage is: “We have been misled.” Frey’s memoir was more fiction than fact, but was marketed as fact. Even so, I have trouble understanding the furor.

One of my first historical reveries was brought on by a diary I read of a Quaker young woman in 18th century England. I was swept away by this “true” account. On my next trip to London, I researched her life; it was there that I learned that the diary was fiction, a novel. I felt disillusioned, let down, but then thought: “What a good novel.” For it drew me into the world of the past in a very real way—and that’s what fiction can do that fact cannot.

The beauty of ancient texts

This blog, BibliOdyssey, is a wonderful compendium of visuals from old texts. Delicious browsing.

Ancient libraries on-line

Renaissance Magazine has an interesting article in the December, 2007 (#58) issue on how ancient books are being digitized for on-line libraries. Normally books are scanned, but the photo-like images take up lots of file space. If converted to text, the files are smaller. An additional advantage, for the researcher, is that they can then be searched.

However, converting old books to text is challenging because of the irregularity of the printing. An interesting solution makes use of the garbled letters test given to an estimated 60 million internet users a day. By incorporating snippets of a scanned book into the tests—and feeding the “translations” back to the digital library—a digital text version of the book is created.

Things I didn't know.

The visiting card was introduced to Europe in the 17th century during the reign of Louis XIV who was known as the Sun King. In the same century the practice began to take hold in English society. At around the same time, the card moved from its social beginnings to a business purpose with the introduction of the trade card.

Louis XIV: King of Bling

This is an interesting article on Louis's passion for diamonds, and how it began.

Louis the XIV ascended to the French throne and became the Sun King in 1643. Because of his love of diamonds, a better name for him might be "The King of Bling."

Louis' love of diamonds made him an odd duck in the fashion world of the time. In the 1600s, and for centuries before that, Europe's high and mighty didn't want diamonds — they wanted pearls. In fact, when Christopher Columbus went to the New World, pearls were on the top of Queen Isabella's wish list — way ahead of gold and silver (diamonds didn't even make the list).

But Louis the XIV was having none of that. He was dazzled by diamonds, which were incredibly rare in those days. This was before diamonds were discovered in Brazil or South Africa, when the world's diamonds came from the river sediments of the Golconda region of India.

Luckily for Louis, an intrepid explorer came along. His name was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, and he's the greatest explorer you never heard of.

I love Tavernier's description of Louis at court:

"In the middle of this hall, and near the side overlooking the court, as in a theatre, they place the throne when the Emperor comes to give audience and administer justice. It is a small bed of the size of our camp beds, with its four columns, the canopy, the back, a bolster, and counterpane; all of which are covered with diamonds."