OK, I love being called traditional. I am starting to feel proud of it. The lecture on the difficult accessibility, or inaccessibility of truth is a great intellectual exercise and should serve us all as a reminder. But have you thought what being consequent with what you say -not in fiction, but in history, social sciences and even in politics or judiciary- and giving up any attempt at fidelity, any attempt as the most accurate interpretation would mean? Will the criteria to evaluate a social theory or a particular interpretation of the past be the commercial success or the fun readers have while reading it? Is Schama better historian of the French revolution than Palmer because he sells more? Despite the fact that you can find mistakes on almost every page and despite the fact that he stresses brutality and bloodiness to make it fun for the spectators of the "Scary Movie". Should the eloquence of a lawyer beat the fingerprints, because everything is relative?
What I see as respect for the real people is 1) trying to be faithful to their characters and ideas even in the creative writing. That does not mean one cannot put them into a spaceship and send them to Alfa Centauri in a fiction. Or write a parodical fiction on, let's say, "jacobins at the high school". Of course the writer can do that and it can be pretty good. What I feel uneasy about is to use real people's names while manipulating deliberately and consciusly what we know about their ideas and attitudes to make it "more fun", to "serve our plot". I can give you an example from that "masterpiece" by Hilary Mantel: Babet and the Duplays were real people, and I am afraid the UK-US teenagers who have their access to FR through this "work of fiction" will get a deliberately deformed idea of them. 2) I do accept the writers using historical personae as bearers of ideas and principles, though sometimes it can get very instrumental and manipulative, too. And I feel it's legitimate to point to this manipulation and ahistorical interpretation. To this group, I'd put Büchner (as lucienco brightly analyzes) and even Wajda. 3) What I start to feel sick about what lucieanco called with insight "works in which the authors clearly and consciously distort certain historical persons and events not to make a philosophical or political point (which, though potentially problematic [if the fact/fiction distinction isn't maintained, as we've gone through last month :D], is how half of world literature has come about since ancient times) but just to fit in better with their personal fantasy of the 'soap opera'". I could not express it better.
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What I see as respect for the real people is
1) trying to be faithful to their characters and ideas even in the creative writing. That does not mean one cannot put them into a spaceship and send them to Alfa Centauri in a fiction. Or write a parodical fiction on, let's say, "jacobins at the high school". Of course the writer can do that and it can be pretty good. What I feel uneasy about is to use real people's names while manipulating deliberately and consciusly what we know about their ideas and attitudes to make it "more fun", to "serve our plot". I can give you an example from that "masterpiece" by Hilary Mantel: Babet and the Duplays were real people, and I am afraid the UK-US teenagers who have their access to FR through this "work of fiction" will get a deliberately deformed idea of them.
2) I do accept the writers using historical personae as bearers of ideas and principles, though sometimes it can get very instrumental and manipulative, too. And I feel it's legitimate to point to this manipulation and ahistorical interpretation. To this group, I'd put Büchner (as lucienco brightly analyzes) and even Wajda.
3) What I start to feel sick about what lucieanco called with insight "works in which the authors clearly and consciously distort certain historical persons and events not to make a philosophical or political point (which, though potentially problematic [if the fact/fiction distinction isn't maintained, as we've gone through last month :D], is how half of world literature has come about since ancient times) but just to fit in better with their personal fantasy of the 'soap opera'". I could not express it better.