Reminds me of the premise of Stranger in a strange land.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 8:01 AM, Bruce A. Metcalf <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Udhay Shankar N wrote:
>
> Bruce Metcalf wrote:
>>
>> I'm curious to know how the list feels about the junction of fiction and
>>> history. Your thoughts?
>>>
>>
>> ​There are two kinds of fiction (I know of) that play with this junction,
>> from opposite ends: The Roman à clef​ [1] and the secret history [1].
>> While
>> the former is a fictionalised account of actual events, the latter is more
>> interesting to me, being a fiction presented as reality which was until
>> now
>> hidden from the public.
>>
>
> Not that I disagree with this, but...
>
> I wanted to see how people here felt about the thought that history -- the
> stuff presented as facts -- is more often a fiction assembled from the
> scraps of evidence left by the past, with the gaps and motivations filled
> in by the historian.
>
> Is this the general opinion of what history is and what historians do, or
> were you thinking of something different?
>
> Just curious....
>
> Cheers,
> Bruce
>
>

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