Historical Crime Fiction as Popular Historiography

Due to the current history boom in the UK, which manifests itself in the conspicuous popularity of historical novels, costume dramas, and in rising visitor numbers to museums, the study of popular historiography has become a growing and vibrant field. Popular historiography formats such as costume dramas, historical romances, and re-enactments have been recognised as a key influence on the public's knowledge of the past. Consumed informally and voluntarily, entertaining and easily accessible, popular histories are often more significant for the public's perception of ‘historical fact’ than ‘academic’ forms of historiography. This article examines historical crime fiction as a genre of popular historiography with a special focus on recent novels set in the late seventeenth century, a period that has lately been the focus of a number of exciting crime series. As a genre mostly written to a formula, concentrating on a narrow theme (i.e. crime and violence), and typically showing the life of ‘the mean streets’, crime fiction has a genre-specific view of the past. Due to its focus on the everyday, it shows aspects of history which are particularly popular with a wider public. Additionally, as it is frequently preoccupied with history's dark secrets, crime fiction is especially suited to re-writing established images of the past.

“The Magic-Making Misṭar Rinālḍs” and the Development of Urdu Prose Fiction

In histories of the Urdu novel, the name of G.W.M. Reynolds (1814-1879) is either not mentioned at all or only in passing reference to his possible influence on Sharar, Urdu’s first writer of historical romances. But the actual role that this ill-reputed contemporary of Dickens played in the development of Urdu prose fiction was far greater. By 1918, twenty-four of his massive works were available in Urdu, some in more than one translation, and all reprinted more than once. Among his translators were a number of significant poets and fiction writers of the time. Arguably, between 1890s and 1920, Reynolds was not only the most widely read author in Urdu but also the most admired. He influenced not only writers of historical romances, but also inspired what can be best described as the earliest original crime tales in Urdu.

Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age

Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age argues that late-nineteenth-century US fiction grapples with and helps to conceptualize the disagreeable feelings that are both a threat to citizens’ agency and an inescapable part of the emotional life of democracy—then as now. In detailing the corruption and venality for which the period remains known, authors including Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Adams, and Helen Hunt Jackson evoked the depressing inefficacy of reform, the lunatic passions of the mob, and the revolting appetites of lobbyists and office seekers. Readers and critics of these Washington novels, historical romances, and satirical romans à clef have denounced their fiercely negative tone, seeing it as a sign of cynicism and elitism. This book argues, in contrast, that their distrust of politics is coupled with an intense investment in it—not quite apathy, but not quite hope. Chapters examine both common and idiosyncratic forms of political emotion, including “crazy love,” disgust, “election fatigue,” and the myriad feelings of hatred and suspicion provoked by the figure of the hypocrite. In so doing, the book corrects critics’ too-narrow focus on “sympathy” as the American novel’s model political emotion. We think of reform novels as fostering feeling for fellow citizens or for specific causes. Not Quite Hope argues that Gilded Age fiction refocuses attention on the unstable emotions that shape our relation to politics as such.

Ceferino Suárez Bravo al compás de los tiempos: El tigre y la zorra, reescritura del texto dramático Los dos compadres, verdugo y sepulturero

<p>Ceferino Suárez Bravo, erudito ovetense de mediados del XIX, no será ajeno al tiempo de inestabilidad<br />política y social en el que vive, y publica, con motivo de las revueltas que precedieron a la segunda<br />guerra carlista, el drama Los dos compadres, verdugo y sepulturero. Es este argumento el que le servirá<br />reelaborado, años más tarde, para un poema del estilo de los grandes romances históricos de Rivas,<br />Espronceda o Zorrilla. El tigre y la zorra, divulgado en el Semanario Pintoresco Español, representa este<br />el auge del Romancero, así como de la fábula, la leyenda y la temática medieval, con Álvaro de Luna y<br />Juan II como telón de fondo.</p><p><br /><br />Ceferino Suárez Bravo, an Ottoman scholar from the mid-nineteenth century, will not be unaware of the<br />time of political and social instability in which he lives, and published, in the wake of the revolts that<br />preceded the Second Carlist War, the drama Los dos compadres, verdugo y sepulturero. It is this argument<br />that will serve, reworked, years later for a poem of the style of the great historical romances of Rivas,<br />Espronceda or Zorrilla. El tigre y la zorra, published in the Semanario pintoresco español, represents from<br />this the rise of the romancero, as well as from the fable, the legend and the medieval theme, with Álvaro<br />de Luna and Juan II as a backdrop.</p><p> </p>

The Bellator and Chevalerie

This chapter describes the origins and development of chivalry, asking when knights began to believe that their lives were not inherently sinful. It traces the influence of the Crusades, and the Church’s declarations on licit and illicit violence. Secular and religious ‘manuals’ of chivalry are examined for their competing models of behaviour; the Arthurian romances are analysed for their representations of courtliness and chivalry, and contrasted with the pseudo-historical romances of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Discussion turns to twelfth- and thirteenth-century political theory, and the different political circumstances in England and France. The chapter then proceeds to an analysis of the romance Gui de Warewic as an exploration of these themes, and concludes with an analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a critique of chivalry.