Nonfiction Matters
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Posted by Marc Aronson on November 5, 2009
Some Books On My ShelfDid you all catch the article in the Times about new views of the Battle of Agincourt? tinyurl.com/ykg235l If you, or your school, teaches Henry V part one this is a great article to circ, because the whole "Band of Brothers" image of the vastly outnumbered plucky English against the arrogant, aristocratic, French has come under question. I'm no Early Modern or military history expert, and the article makes clear that there are competing views, some still see the battle as Shakespeare did. But what is wonderful about this piece is it shows how our views of the past are changing. In this case, because of detailed archival work -- instead of building up a sense of the past only, or mainly, from written accounts (thus generally by men attached in some way to power -- the church, the nobilit...Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on November 3, 2009
The HF Seminar Clarified Something For Me -- And I Hope For You -- About K-12 Nonfiction
Posted by Marc Aronson on November 2, 2009
BothI selected the passages from March because I see in them examples of what I treasure as well as what I dislike in HF. Oddly enough the same book, even the same paragraph epitomized both ends of the HF spectrum -- to my eyes. Like Mary, I found that whole first excerpt up through the word "shards" to be a marvel. It exemplified what Greenblatt said of Mantell. Brooks combined visual description with such a deep sense of time that the supposed moment of writing was not only reflected in word choices ("slough," "obelisk") but in the very character of the world the narrator was seeing and describing. Perhaps Brooks had some period photo or engraving to use as reference, but she was not merely describing it with a few period terms like a reenacter wearing a costume, she was inhabiting that world, seeing it with the worn, dashed-id...Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 30, 2009
Some Links, Courtesy of Monica
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 30, 2009
So fellow seminarians, we've had -- and I hope continue to have -- a lively discussion. So for your final assay (consideration) and essay (if you want to write about it) here are a couple of extracts from the Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel March by Geraldine Brooks (which, by coincidence, Marina was reading just as I was posting about HF). I suspect that some high school teachers are already using this with their classes, and they should. After all many young people know the shadow he cast already -- by reading Little Women. Washington DC in 1862 "And all that rises from the slough is ramshackle or unfinished, so that it looks already ruined. We passed the obelisk meant to honor the father of the natin. It rises like a broken pencil, no one-third built, and beneath it he dressed stones piled here and there, grass grown all around....Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 29, 2009
How Can I Use This With My Students?
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 28, 2009
Sticks and Stones: The N WordYour comments and Greenblatt's article have helped focus what we want from HF: that "hallucination of presence." We've begun to explore, though, what is allowed in order to weave that spell, and what breaks it. In the Horn Book guide (which is called A Family of Readers -- suggesting that it is not a book for parents who want to get their kids to do something the parents avoid) there is a second piece on Historical Fiction, this one written by the well-known critic and retired professor Betty Carter. Betty brings up the matter of racial epithets, in particular the N word. In her view, shocking an offensive as it is to many modern readers, there are contexts in which it is not only accurate to the period, but necessary to convey the extremely common attitudes, expressions, and mood of the time....Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 26, 2009
Lets Run This Like a Seminar, Not a BlogIn other words, I am not here to state, first off, what I think, but to present to you the challenges Greenblatt's essay poses to us -- the community interested in books for younger readers. If any of you would like to respond with a post longer than the comment allows, or to include the links it blocks, just email me via my website and I'll post your thoughts as blogs. One of the essays in the book on childrens and YA literature I am working on with the editors of the Horn Book is a revised version of the historian Anne Scott McCleod's Horn Book essay, "Writing Backward" tinyurl.com/ys435e She challenges three beloved books for being so historically false they no longer maintain the balance of "history" and "fiction" the genre dema...Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 25, 2009
A Beautiful Song, But I Think Our Job As Parents Has Changed
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 23, 2009
"The Hallucination of Presence"The same issue of the New York Review of Books with the Tim Garton Ash essay on 1989 included this review: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23250 Stephen Greenblatt, who is well known in the academic world as an authority on writing in Shakespeare's time, reviews Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which won the highest literary prize in England this year, the Booker Prize. The book is historical fiction, centering on a key member of the court of Henry VIII, Thomas (not Oliver) Cromwell. Greenblatt uses the review to question what historical fiction does, because Mantel does it so well. Here is his view: the best historical novels "generate a sense in the reader best summed up in exclamations like "Yes, this is the way it must have been&qu...Read More
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 23, 2009
So They Tell Me, But Please Post If You Have Any ProblemsI'll put up a more normal, non-IT post, soon.
Posted by Marc Aronson on October 22, 2009
If you, Like Mary, Could not get an RSS feed of this blog, the fault is ours.Apparently this is another system problem that is also effecting other sites, I will let you know once it has been fixed
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