'Facts are not truth': Hilary Mantel goes on the record about historical fiction
This article by , Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, School of English Literature, was originally published on . Read the .
In a recent talk at the Hay literary festival, Cambridge historian and biographer he had seen an increasing number of prospective students citing Hilary Mantel鈥檚 Booker Prize-winning historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, as supporting evidence for their knowledge of Tudor history.
Guy suggested that Mantel鈥檚 as yet incomplete trilogy on Thomas Cromwell鈥檚 life and career 鈥� the third instalment, The Mirror and the Light, comes out later this year 鈥� has become something of a resource for a number of budding history undergraduates, despite the fact that they contain historical inaccuracies (casting, for example, Thomas More as a woman-hating tyrant, Anne Boleyn as a female devil and getting the wrong sheriff of London to lead More to his execution).
The Guardian quotes Guy as saying that this 鈥渂lur between fact and fiction is troubling鈥�. In fact, Guy鈥檚 comments on the blurring of fact and fiction, and related concerns of authenticity, do read as a worrying prognosis. In the age of Trump and fake news, it seems particularly important that we call bullshit on so-called 鈥渁lternative facts鈥� and place an .
Yet historical fiction, in all its varieties, can and frequently does raise vital questions about how we write, and conceptualise, historical processes. Indeed, when writers of historical fiction make stuff up about the past, they sometimes do so in an effort to sharpen, rather than dull, our capacities to separate fact from fiction.
鈥楾here are no endings鈥�
In the first of five Reith Lectures to be aired on BBC Radio 4, Mantel similarly argues that in death 鈥渨e enter into fiction鈥� and the lives of the dead are given shape and meaning by the living 鈥� whether that . As the narrator of Bring up the Bodies puts it: 鈥淭here are no endings.鈥� Endings are, instead, 鈥渁ll beginnings鈥�, the foundation of interpretative acts.
In Mantel鈥檚 view, the past is not something we passively consume, either, but that which we actively 鈥渃reate鈥� in each act of remembrance. That鈥檚 not to say, of course, that Mantel is arguing that there are no historical 鈥渇acts鈥� or that the past didn鈥檛 happen. Rather, she reminds us that the evidence we use to give narrative shape to the past is 鈥渁lways partial鈥�, and often 鈥渋ncomplete鈥�. 鈥淔acts are not truth鈥�, Mantel argues, but 鈥渢he record of what鈥檚 left on the record鈥�. It is up to the living to interpret, or, indeed, misinterpret, those accounts.
In this respect the writer of historical fiction is not working in direct opposition to the professional historian: both must think creatively about what remains, deploying 鈥� especially when faced with gaps and silences in the archive 鈥� 鈥渟election, elision, artful arrangement鈥�, literary manoeuvres more closely associated with than with Guy the historian. However, exceptional examples from both fields should, claims Mantel, be 鈥渟elf-questioning鈥� and always willing to undermine their own claims to authenticity.
Richard鈥檚 teeth
Mantel鈥檚 own theorising of history writing shares much with that other great Tudor storyteller: William Shakespeare.
While Shakespeare鈥檚 Richard III (1592), can be read as a towering achievement in historical propaganda 鈥� casting Richard, the last of the Plantagenets, as an evil usurper, and Richmond, first Tudor king and Elizabeth I鈥檚 grandfather, as prophetic saviour 鈥� the play invites serious speculation about the idiosyncratic nature of historical truth.
Take this exchange in Act II Scene IV of the play, which comes just before the doomed young princes are led to the tower. Here, the younger of the two, Richard, duke of York, asks his grandmother, the duchess of York, about stories he鈥檚 heard about his uncle鈥檚 birth:
York: Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast
That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old 鈥� Duchess of York: I pray thee, pretty York, who told thee this?
York: Grandam, his nurse.
Duchess of York: His nurse? Why, she was dead ere thou wast born.
York: If 鈥檛were not she, I cannot tell who told me.
Fresh in the knowledge that his uncle鈥檚 nurse died before he was born, the boy has no idea who told him the story of his uncle鈥檚 gnashing baby teeth. Has he misremembered his source, blurring the lines between fact and fiction? Was the boy鈥檚 uncle born a monster, or is that a convenient fiction his enemies might wish to tell themselves? And why on earth would Shakespeare bother to include this digression?
In all other respects, Richard III invites straightforward historical divisions between good (the Tudors) and evil (the Plantagenet dynasty). But here, subversive doubts creep in about the provenance of the stories we tell about real historical people, with the 鈥渉istorical fact鈥� briefly revealed as a messy, fallible concept, always on the edge of make-believe.
Near-history
Richard III reminds us that historical facts can be fictionalised, but also that the fictional can just as easily turn into fact. Mantel鈥檚 Tudor cycle has been haunted by similar anxieties. In the often terrifying world of Henry VIII鈥檚 court, her novels show how paranoia breeds rumour, how rumour bleeds into and shapes fact and, as a result, 鈥溾��. History isn鈥檛 just a different country for Mantel, it鈥檚 something intimately tied to the fictions we cling to.
Brought to life: Thomas Cromwell. : Hans Holbein via the Frick Collection.(detail) via Wikimedia CommonsAnd indeed in Wolf Hall that blurred relationship between fact and fiction, history and myth, is often front and centre. In Wolf Hall the past is somewhere above, between, and below the official record. History is not to be found in 鈥渃oronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions.鈥� Instead it鈥檚 in 鈥渁 woman鈥檚 sigh鈥�, or the smell she 鈥渓eaves on the air鈥�, a 鈥渉and pulling close the bed curtain鈥�; all those things that are crucially absent from the archive.
The fact of history鈥檚 ephemerality opens a 鈥済ap鈥� for the fictional, into which we 鈥減our [our] fears, fantasies, desires鈥�. As Mantel : 鈥淚s there a firm divide between myth and history, fiction and fact: or do we move back and forth on a line between, our position indeterminate and always shifting?鈥�
For the Canadian novelist, Guy Gavriel Kay, fantasy is a : 鈥淲hen we work with distant history, to a very great degree, we are all guessing.鈥�
This is why Kay is at leave to employ the conventions of fantasy to deal with the past, transposing real historical events, peoples, and places 鈥� medieval Spain and Roderigo Diaz (El Cid) in The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995), for example, or the Viking invasions of Britain in The Last Light of the Sun (2004) 鈥� into the realm of the fantastical.
Kay researches (he provides bibliographies in all his books) and then unravels history and historical evidence, putting a 鈥渜uarter turn鈥� on the assumed facts: renaming historical figures, reversing and collapsing the order of known events, substituting invented religions for real ones, introducing magic into the history of Renaissance Europe, or China. He has described the result of this process as 鈥渘ear-history鈥�: alternative pasts that are at once .
Like Mantel, Kay鈥檚 (near-)historical fictions can be read as less an effort to evade the blur between fact and fiction than to honestly point towards that blur as a condition of history itself. After all, history is debatable and often impossible to verify. It鈥檚 a reminder, perhaps, that we sometimes need the tropes of fiction to smooth over those complexities, or render them legible, truthful, in the contemporary moment. We need metaphors, and similes, so that the dead can speak and act, live and die.
Publication date: 13 June 2017