Sarah K. Herz
This unit is designed to help teachers use historical fiction in history class. The history teacher can use this genre of literature to clarify, reinforce and dramatize significant historical events and themes that students might not otherwise remember or understand. These novels can provide unusual insights into history for the student who is confused, uninterested, or unreceptive to textbook history. The student’s personal response to a well written historical novel can be the beginning of an understanding of what history is about and why it is accessible in school libraries, public libraries, and in soft cover editions in book stores.
Historians write about the past; they interpret and record those important events and tendencies in history that give meaning to our lives. As a working definition an historical novel is “about past public events and people and social conditions and are based on historical facts. The historical novelist does not distort historical data for the sake of literary form.” Very often, in the classroom, mere facts become a body of information that seems irrelevant and dull to students. Textbook historical figures often become so heroic and extraordinary or so flat and lifeless that students cannot conceive of these people as ordinary men and women endowed with normal human characteristics. Students cannot comprehend that these historical figures hold a world view of another era. When students cannot grasp the idea of historical figures as real people, then history becomes more mythology than reality. Paradoxically, historical fiction is an excellent tool to upset this mythology.
Most students like a good story, a story with excitement, adventure and challenge; if a historical novel is well written, it includes these elements and more. The “more” is historical accuracy in detail and theme, the necessary elements of a meaningful historical exploration through fiction. The conflicts of men and women in history become real to the student because these men and women can be presented in their human dimension. They are mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, who are caught up in a particular event. Their defeats and successes evoke an emotional response from readers. This response is the draws students into the world of the past and embues his perspective with an historical dimension. The historical figures emerge as human beings responding to a human condition in the context of history.
The history teacher can devise numerous strategies and techniques for sifting the fact and the fiction. The historical clues may be picked out by students who see textbook history spring to life in historical fiction. Students can become experts or “nitpickers” about the writer’s use of historical data and the exercise can be stimulating for class discussion. Reference sources for checking the accuracy of historical data include encyclopedias, almanacs, biographical dictionaries, dictionaries of history, serious local and national histories, and numerous other readily available sources. Students may check school and town libraries as well as local historical societies and the state library. Primary source materials are often available locally in church records, deeds, wills, probate records in town halls, local cemeteries, local tax lists, federal census, town meeting records, old maps, letters and diaries, sermons, industrial records, local newspapers and elders who have resided in a community for a long time.
The history teachers who use this unit should be aware that though the bibliography of historical fiction focuses on Connecticut history, any good historical novel can provide a rich experience and reflect a period of history. School and town librarians are indispensable resources. Junior and senior high reading lists are available from the National Council of Teachers of English in Urbana, Illinois. There are a few bibliographies that index historical fiction; they are listed in the bibliographical section of this unit.
As history teachers use more historical fiction in the classroom students will develop the ability to recognize and analyze good and weak historical fiction. More important, history will become a subject about real places and real people facing real problems, not just a list of dates and places circled on a map on the bulletin board.
There is no mystique in using historical fiction in history class. It’s a positive way to learn history.
