I love historical fiction and I have always rolled my eyes at other historians' dismissive attitudes towards it. I mean, sure, most of it is not 100% accurate, but it's not a documentary, it's entertainment.
My biggest pet peeve is people complaining about the costumes in Outlander and how historically inaccurate they are. It's a show about time travel, for crying out loud, are you sure that it's in the costumes where you want to put an end to the suspension of disbelief?!?!?!?! If nothing else, of course a time traveling person would bring some of their 20th century ideas and practices to the past.
That said, I've never watched historical fiction about my super niche subject, so maybe that would change things!
I love your comment! It really adds some perspective and just goes to show that my nitpick nature might be the one at fault here!
I should say perhaps that *now* I just don't feel particularly attracted to the genre, but that it can definitely change sometime in the future (I didn't use to read horror and suddenly there a whole lot of that in my logs etc). But 14th-century France is just too sore of a point for me, perhaps?
And Druon's work was certainly researched, but it just shows its age in ways that a more modern take on the topic probably (hopefully?) would not when it comes to the treatment of its female characters so far--and my itchiness comes more from that, I believe, than anything else... I'll certainly keep at it, because now it's my little mountain to climb and conquer.
I'm less fond of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages for different reasons, mostly because a lot of it tends to border on fantasy, which I'm not interested in for the most part. Others are really into the damsel in distress trope, as well as others, which gets old. I can understand why a medievalist would be disinclined to read/watch historical fiction set in that period.
And I realize the version of Outlander I chose to make this point is the TV show and not the books, but I've read the books too and they are for the most part not wildly inaccurate. But still, they are fiction.
I love historical fiction and I have always rolled my eyes at other historians' dismissive attitudes towards it. I mean, sure, most of it is not 100% accurate, but it's not a documentary, it's entertainment.
My biggest pet peeve is people complaining about the costumes in Outlander and how historically inaccurate they are. It's a show about time travel, for crying out loud, are you sure that it's in the costumes where you want to put an end to the suspension of disbelief?!?!?!?! If nothing else, of course a time traveling person would bring some of their 20th century ideas and practices to the past.
That said, I've never watched historical fiction about my super niche subject, so maybe that would change things!
I love your comment! It really adds some perspective and just goes to show that my nitpick nature might be the one at fault here!
I should say perhaps that *now* I just don't feel particularly attracted to the genre, but that it can definitely change sometime in the future (I didn't use to read horror and suddenly there a whole lot of that in my logs etc). But 14th-century France is just too sore of a point for me, perhaps?
And Druon's work was certainly researched, but it just shows its age in ways that a more modern take on the topic probably (hopefully?) would not when it comes to the treatment of its female characters so far--and my itchiness comes more from that, I believe, than anything else... I'll certainly keep at it, because now it's my little mountain to climb and conquer.
I'm less fond of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages for different reasons, mostly because a lot of it tends to border on fantasy, which I'm not interested in for the most part. Others are really into the damsel in distress trope, as well as others, which gets old. I can understand why a medievalist would be disinclined to read/watch historical fiction set in that period.
And I realize the version of Outlander I chose to make this point is the TV show and not the books, but I've read the books too and they are for the most part not wildly inaccurate. But still, they are fiction.