Context: Fiction, Film, and "Facts'

Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of The Medusa

In several posts I have raised the issue of context in evaluating essays and books. Today, I am posting a question I asked on quora.com, another frequent visitor so to speak.

I raised this question in part because I think the issue of knowledge and the way it is categorized is undergoing a fruitful and necessary transformation. The idea that we can put things in categories that are stable and unchanging is a dangerous myth.

The best companies and universities in the world see the value in creating communication streams across and down and inside out and outside in. Creative ideas come from outsiders, insiders, and those who are neither. The more people realize that some of the best ways to learn are by thinking creatively and approaching topics within a shared community.

Quora.com is one such a community. There, people from all walks of life who have a passion for knowledge, share questions and answers, all for free. I get nothing for promoting the site; I simply have gained great advice and help from people I have never met and could not afford to pay for the information they give me.

Here is the question I asked and the answer I received and my response back:

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History: Should Hilary Mantel's novels be used to teach history students about Henry VIII?

Reply by Eugenio Triana

Should is a strong word, although if students are willing to read over 1,000 pages on the intricacies of Tudor politics and the dissolution of the monasteries, you should weep with joy.

To restate a case, history is a collection of arguments. It is in examining these arguments and making a case for one over the other that the main lessons of history are learnt. The best education one can hope to get from the subject is in the crafting and debating of such arguments to hone one's "critical thinking" (although I'm not sure there can be true thinking of any other kind).

Hans Holbein's Portrait of Thomas More

Turn the prism of our hindsight one way and Thomas More is a principled man, of unshakable morals, who was willing to die in order to defend what he believed in against a corrupt British monarchy. Turn it the other way, and More was a religious fanatic, an uncompromising egotist who believed his own ideals should be placed above the future of the country in which he lived in.

A Man for All Seasons makes the first case. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the second. I think an ideal history class, and an enjoyable one too, would pair a reading of both these works together with Hans Holbein's portraits of Thomas More, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, as a way to understand how these three men were viewed in three very different ages, with three very different standards. For the dates, facts and figures, there is always Wikipedia or the standard textbook, and one lesson should suffice to learn all about primary, secondary and tertiary sources.

That said, I think the more sensible recommendation is that Mantel's books are a bit too challenging for most students, and that reading and understanding the textbook (which will likely summarise and condense all the arguments above) should be the first achievement.

Henry VII painting 'attributed' to Hans Holbein

But they will be missing out on Hilary Mantel's great prose:

"He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. Show me where it says, in the Bible, “Purgatory.” Show me where it says “relics, monks, nuns.” Show me where it says “Pope.”

Thomas More

I am assuming this question is asking about school students at high school level or below. Any university history student studying this period and who is not at least curious about Mantel's novel has chosen the wrong degree.

My reply:

It is answers like yours that keep me thinking that quota has transformative possibilities for education and the world at large. Your prose is wonderful and you set the scene, so to speak, perfectly. The More example would be a great teaching tool. Thank you so much. I am very interested in questioning the ways in which the genres and boxes we use actually make learning less useful and certainly less enjoyable. Mantel and A Man for All Seasons will stay with a student forever. If not, they are simply not attuned to history or novels or film. But there are those who say that fiction does not belong in a history class, and yet the research and detail of Mantel is such that it recreates a world in ways historians should. Or at least that is how I feel. I think of Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s’ Parrot or even his chapter in History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters on Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of The Medusa and state there are very few critics of any sort who have the factual details, the recondite insight, and the prose to give life to a man or a painting. So too with Mantel.

In any case I hope you will not mind, but I am going to use your words on my blog tonight as an example of great writing in and of itself, and as a part of my effort to see how creativity crosses disciplines and genres. Thank you again.

And I would not be honest if I said I wish you were correct about history students at university but frankly, if it isn’t on the test or it isn’t offered as an assignment, few would have bothered with it. Maybe this is not true in the UK.

I asked about Mantel in part because I listed her most recent Booker Prize winning novel (what people in the US would equate with the Pulitzer) as one of my top books of the year, and in part because I think Mantel is one of the leading scholars on this historical period living today. To me, it does not matter if she is categorized as a novelist. The details she provides are historically accurate as far as we can know, and she has spent many years learning the stories that are more important than something which tries to rely on ‘facts’ alone. (See the books When Can You Trust The Experts and The Half Life of Facts for data that demonstrates that facts are often fiction). Her insights into character and motive rival even the best of any historian; she is not afraid to add color and nuanced thought that leads readers to understand motive rather than just actions. Historians since Heroditus have done as much. Gibbon did it for innumerable volumes. His footnotes especially are often questions about fats and fiction and the methodology behind history. In other words, history and fiction are partners not adversaries. And so too with film, and poetry, and quora. And innumerable social media outlets and blogs.

I should also add that Eugenio knows about film. He is a film-maker himself who has done projects from a music video incorporating innovative animation, to writing an homage of cult hero Russ Meyer’s films. Once thought to be only a B movie mogul, Meyer has served as a teacher for many of the most innovative film-makers in the last two generations. His work exemplifies that notion that we can learn from sources we might have easily dismissed or overlooked.

Eugenio provided me this great answer and great idea for teachers of history without knowing me from Adam. That this could happen underscores the revolutionary power of social media. Education does not have to cost anything. Sal Khan and others are trying to get us to see how communities across the world can educate each other and provide training to the poor for free in ways that will revolutionize the opportunities for them and for the rest of the world. I will have much more to say on these topics in this New Year.