Fact and Fiction: Tasso’s statement of intent

A fictional work based on a famous (or notorious) historical event has to negotiate between the factual and the fictional: it cannot contain facts or it would be plain historiography, and it cannot ignore facts completely since there will be certain expectations of historical truth from readers. This is one of the problems every writer of historical fiction has to deal with. How much adherence to truth? How many embellishments? In Canto One (for canto read chapter) of Jerusalem Delivered , Torquato Tasso, addressing himself to the Muse, friend and companion of all epic poets, apologises in advance for “embroidering” the truth. He then hastens to explain why:

In Greek mythology, the Nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mmenosyne (which means Memory: make a note of this for later!), protected the Arts and Sciences, including epic poetry and history. In this 1745 illustration of Jerusalem Delivered by Giambatista Piazzetta, the Muses are depicted on Mt Helicon, their residence, while two winged figures (top right) are carrying a cameo with Torquato Tasso’s portrait, thus glorifying him and his epic achievement.
Sp Coll Hunterian Cd.2.1., Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library.

You know how, where Parnassus most proffers

its flattering sweets, the world flocks in delight,

yet how, by charming in mellifluous verse,

Truth has disposed the most depraved to right – 

as sometimes, to a feverish child, the nurse

holds out a glass with sugared rim. Her sleigh

tricks him to drain the bitter draught. So stealth

restores him, and delusion gives him health.

Tasso, like many authors of historical fiction, clearly believes that facts must be sweetened by fiction to become more palatable, just like medicine: it is necessary and, I might add, expected. Why else would someone chose to read a historical novel and not a straight historical narrative? Of course it is these “embroideries” that made historians scoff at epic poets (or historical novelists), rejecting their accounts as false and invented. But in recent years things have become more complicated in this relationship between historical fact and fiction: from theorist Hayden White’s assertion that historical narratives, too, are verbal fictions, to historian Simon Schama’s use of fiction as a tool for reconstructing historical facts in Dead Certainties (1991), it is obvious that historiography and historical fiction are not as clear-cut, separate categories as one would like to think.

 

Welcome to First Crusade Fictions

 

 

The poet of Jerusalem Deliveredwearing his crown of laurels. © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014

 

Frontispiece of Jerusalem Delivered. © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014. Torquato Tasso began composing his monumental epic in the early 1570s. Parts of the work as well as pirated complete editions of it were in circulation before its first authorized edition in 1581. This illustration is possibly from an eighteenth century edition: the Hunterian Collection in the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow includes a two -volume edition (Foulis: Glasgow, 1763; Sp Coll Hunterian Cz.3.25-26, vols 1-2), which contains the same illustrations by Sebastien LeClerc.

Writers and fans of historical fiction would agree: Torquato Tasso was the George R.R. Martin of his time. Tasso’s epic fantasy, Jerusalem Delivered, based on the First Crusade, is populated with knights and fights, male and female warriors and witches, castles and dragons, forests and quests. The illustrations in two different editions, housed  in the Hunterian Art Gallery collection and in the Special Collections of the Glasgow University Library,  capture the exotic and magical appeal of this heroic world.
Factual sources, of course, tell a rather different story: chroniclers and historians, geographers and travel-writers depict the extraordinary event of the First Crusade and the world that created it from the point of view of reality. Maps and photographs of the Holy Land reveal a world completely different to the one created by the poet’s flights of fancy.
Realist or fantasy, historical fiction is ever inspired by known facts, then fills in the gaps with its own inventions, enhancing our experience and enjoyment of the past.
In this blog I will present some of the illustrations inspired by the great Renaissance poet’s epic fantasy, as well as factual information on the First Crusade, and then look at how historical reality, fiction, and fantasy interweave to create inspiring, unforgettable works like Jerusalem Delivered.The challenge of creating a plausible, recognisable world which uses historical reality but is not tied down by it is of great personal interest to me as a writer (and avid reader) of historical fiction and fantasy: it will be great if other reader/writers will eventually participate in these discussions and will be inspired, and inspiring, in their turn.