I had an interesting thought yesterday. I was pondering, what if some of the archaic literature we relied upon to document past events was actually fictional accounts intended to be read for leisure?
This prompted me to ask what ancient or medieval (preferably before the 15th century) do you know of? Some may describe The Iliad as historical fiction, what do you think.
P.S. Regarding fictional accounts mistook as historical, I found this enlightening discussion on reddit, libreddit link.
The Tale of Sinuhe is an ancient Egyptian story about 4000 years old so that might fit the bill? :)
I haven’t read it myself yet though I’ve got it laying around here somewhere.
Virgil’s Aenead was overtly fictionalized; it was basically an alternate history version of Homer’s work, that inserted Roman characters and themes to recast the story as foundational to the Roman republic.
Narrow, literalist readings of Jewish writings collected in the Ketuvim (Writings) section of the Tanakh (Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim) fit that.
There wasn’t a hard distinction between learning and leisure like we pretend there is today. A story could have a kernel of historical truth, or perhaps a lot, or none at all; convey important truths about society, the world and our place in it; and be told dramatically to capture attention (ie entertaining) so listeners pay attention to those truths and remember them in difficult situations.
Jewish tradition is to look for 4 levels of meaning in a text, including allegorical and hidden meanings as well as the general plot. Even those who believe the surface level as literally true spend most of their time working with interpretation, what lessons we can learn from the stories.
Then along comes a Greek proselytiser who insisted the particular salvation religion he followed was literally True and therefore better than other salvation religions. And that literalness got read back into a different people’s texts, came to be seen by most of the world as the only way to read them and here we are today.
Very insightful, thank you.
Journey to the West from China. Story of Monkey, good stuff!
The Canterbury Tales is an interesting one because it’s obviously fiction but it’s really one of the only sources we have about how certain members of society were perceived or treated by their peers. So although it’s meant to be read for leisure, you could argue it inadvertently documents past events. The idea of going on a pilgrimage at all is something strange to us at this point in timed in England.
I don’t think anyone ever mistook Beowulf (c. 700–1000 AD) for nonfiction, but just wanted to mention that if you’ve read it and enjoyed it, you might like Grendel, a modern retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s perspective.
Btw it’s really fun to get a side-by-side Modern English and Old English edition of Beowulf and compare them. Wild how much language can change in that time span.
The Metamorphoses (aka The Golden Ass) by Apuleius.
