Dialogue is vital to the research community. In the fourth part of our ‘In conversation with’ series, resident blogger Ebba Strutzenbladh discusses historical fiction with Alyssa Benedetto, a PhD researcher combining the study of medieval history with creative writing and intersectional feminism.

ES: According to you, is historical fiction a genre? Or is it a setting against which an author can write literary fiction, romance, fantasy, etc.?

AB: Historical fiction, to me, can exist as a standalone genre, umbrella term, or as a secondary/subgenre. As a standalone genre, I understand it to be any work of fiction significantly influenced by historical record. It is often heavily researched and sometimes clarified which elements of the work are factual v. fictional. When used as an umbrella term, historical fiction can consist of secondary and subgenres, such as literary fiction, fantasy, romance, etc., but that’s not to say those aren’t standalone or primary genres themselves. Some may consider Game of Thrones to be historical fiction, being heavily influenced by the people and events of the Wars of the Roses. But I think, in this case, fantasy would better serve as the primary genre or umbrella term to which historical fiction would fall below as a subgenre.

In my PhD, I am writing a historical novel informed by historical research. This research will be included in the critical component to my thesis and as an accompaniment to the novel. I use primary and secondary sources, my own and others’ transcriptions of medieval documents, as well as my own research, locating patterns within text used to disestablish and challenge medieval noblewomen’s agency and authority as it exists within historical record. That said, as much as my novel is based on historical evidence and thorough research, bringing these women to life through my writing – women who existed nearly 800 years ago – involves an element of fiction which would characterise the work as historical fiction.

ES: History is one of the few academic disciplines with a literary genre that directly corresponds to (and engages with?) it. What do you think the historical fiction genre means for History as an academic discipline?

AB: Through historical fiction and dramatisation, history has been made accessible to the modern-day consumer. In school we learn about local history, get a general education on national history, and get a brief overview of world history and geography. For myself, growing up in New York, I spent a long time in school being taught about the men who shaped what had become the United States; the songs about ‘the men who died, and gave that right to me’.¹ I don’t recall being taught about many women, or the influence they had that we wouldn’t exist as we do without. Historical fiction and dramatisation allowed me that close-up into the lives of influential women through history, particularly medieval history, and provoked my research and wanting to understand more. It was my first exposure to what some might consider the intimate details of history– critical to our understanding of how and why we think and believe what we do.

ES: Georg Lukács writes that what should matter to historical fiction writers is not ‘the re-telling of great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people who figured in those events. What matters is that we should re-experience the social and human motives which led men [sic] to think, feel and act just as they did in historical reality.’² Lukács was one of the first people to highlight the exotification of the past that perhaps began with the nineteenth century Gothic novels and their ‘fetishisation’ of, particularly, the medieval period.³ What strategies do you use to evade fetishisation or sensationalism in your portrayal of the past?

AB: When adapting women’s stories, particularly in the medieval period, a lot of what you’ll see is either the girlboss-ification of the past or the extreme opposite; women depicted as weak, and men depicted as violent, or sexual predators with few baseline/acceptable examples of those with basic human decency. That’s not to say there weren’t women we would consider girlbosses or weak, or that most men weren’t violent, or sexual predators. And basic human decency, when looking at it through an academic or historical lens, hasn’t evolved so much as we’re taught to believe. 

In my historical novel, to evade the fetishisation and sensationalism of medieval history, I’m taking my protagonist, a thirteenth-century English noblewoman, and walking with her through the decisions she makes and actions she takes that ultimately define her impact on the Anglo-Welsh Marches and their political and military history. I consider her home life, ancestry and upbringing that could have prepared her to make these decisions. Examining her letters and writing, I’ve observed her thought process and how it evolves and varies based on circumstances and other factors. I don’t wish to glorify the events of her life, but tell her story of survival.

ES: Historical fiction (as well as other kinds of fiction) often hinges on the tension between free choice and societal constraints. Modern readers seem captivated by the idea that people in the past couldn’t always follow their ‘hearts’, particularly in love. As a result, many stories focus on (female) main characters who wish to defy arranged marriages. While it’s true that women were restricted by laws and customs, the recurring narrative of women as eternal Juliettes can get tiresome. My research is full of women that, like men, were committed to kinship duties, with limited concern for asserting individual identity – or rather, individual identities consisted of pride in conforming to kin’s expectations. How do we create compelling characters who resonate with modern readers without leaning too heavily on neo-liberal models of personhood and free will?

AB: Societal standards for medieval noblewomen were far more liberal than we, as consumers of historical media, are trained to be aware. In the critical component of my PhD thesis, I look at the feminisation of text: a technique initially utilised by medieval male chroniclers to disguise the ‘manly’ deeds of heroic women through feminine imagery.⁴ Compromising both academic and fictional understandings of the medieval noblewoman in her agency and authority, the subsequent failure to mention her deeds, or replacing her name with that of her husband, father, son, or other relevant male figure present at the time and place which the deed occurred, would also fall under this definition.

In my MRes, I developed a historical drama television series based on the life of a medieval noblewoman who asserted herself as the exception, not the rule, and defied societal standards and expectations. She operated under privilege and status, using a model I refer to as submit-to-gain; occasionally complying with societal standards to ascend the political and military ranks of the war-ridden thirteenth-century Welsh Marches. Even so, I don’t believe female characters have to defy societal standards to make compelling characters in historical fiction and drama, but it is important to acknowledge the women who did defy societal standards, making compelling characters because of it.

ES: Scotland has a particular place in the tradition of historical fiction writing, mainly because the work of Walter Scott really set the tone for how to write about the past in his Waverley (1814) and other novels.⁵ Do you consider yourself to be writing historical fiction in a ‘Scottish’ tradition?

AB: The most famous Scottish novelists, particularly Walter Scott, drew on the conventions of Gothic fiction, including its risky sexual and racial themes, to explore the violent origins and limits of English nationality.⁶ In my historical novel, I intend to follow the Scottish tradition, exploring the violence, limitations, and political and military activity of one English noblewoman living on the Marches of thirteenth-century Wales. The Marches are of great intrigue to me as a novelist because this is where English identity sways and transforms. The lawlessness of the Marches created greater opportunities, freedoms and independence for the nobles who occupied them in the High and Later Middle Ages, especially for the women who would have had far fewer opportunities and liberties in England.

Historical fiction works recommended by Alyssa

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is a literary masterpiece, as is Music & Silence by Rose Tremain. I am also a big fan of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. While research is required in writing any piece of historical fiction, I tend to gravitate towards authors who have either had careers in research or academia, or those whose works are so clearly attached to historical record.

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1. Lee Greenwood, ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ (1984). ↩︎
2. Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 42. ↩︎
3. Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel (London: Routledge, 2010), 14. ↩︎
4. Elizabeth Ewan, ‘The Dangers of Manly Women: Late Medieval Perceptions of Female Heroism in Scotland’s Second War of Independence’ from Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 8. ↩︎
5. Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–8. ↩︎
6. Walter Scott, Ian Duncan (ed.), Ivanhoe (Oxford, 2008; online edn, Oxford World’s Classics, Dec. 2020), Abstract. ↩︎