Why Read Historical Fiction Set in Sixteenth Century France? Reason #4

ESCAPE, RELEVANCE, and DRAMA--these are the reasons I've examined so far to promote historical fiction set in what scholars call the "Early Modern" era. Today, we'll talk about...

Reason #4: EMOTION

Although manners and mores have changed over the centuries, basic human emotions have not, and emotion is what drives fiction. Love, rage, guilt, spite--such emotions define the human experience. Whether a character wears spandex yoga pants or an embroidered bodice, tees off on the fairway or parries a sword blow matters much less to readers than the emotions the character experiences. 

Current scientific research indicates that reading literary fiction increases empathy in readers--by placing themselves in the minds of characters and viewing a fictional world from an unfamiliar perspective, readers become more adept at putting themselves in other people's shoes in real life. The most powerful way readers connect with characters is through shared emotion. Reading a character's emotional experience on the page stirs readers' own emotional memories. This thrill of recognition forms a bond between reader and character, one that encourages the reader to follow that character into an exploration of other emotions that might not be as familiar. As they identify with characters through shared emotional experience, readers come to reconsider their own past experience in more nuanced ways. They not only increase their ability to connect with other people, but they broaden the spectrum of their own remotional response.

By reading novels set in the distant past, readers can experience certain emotions in a more intense way than modern life usually affords. In the sixteenth century, the world was a dangerous and often brutal place, both physically and socially. Emotions like terror, humiliation, and shame, which are seldom experienced today, were common responses to unsettling and unexpected events. Hiding as enemy soldiers ransacked your town and ravished your neighbors' daughters must have inspired a fear quite unlike that of watching the value of your 401k slide. Saying goodbye to a navigator husband boarding a leaky galleon for a voyage to the New World was infintely more traumatic that dropping your spouse off at the airport for a business trip. Being ostracized as an adulterer or tortured for your religious beliefs hardly compares to wagging tongues and cancel culture. Reading historical fiction set in the sixteenth century provides us an opportunity to experience strong sentiments we might never feel in our real lives, thereby allowing us to expand our emotional literacy and our ability to empathize.

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Even as historical fiction allows us to experience the intensity of these emotions, however, it protects us from their real-life consequences. We can cringe in horror as a heretic burns at the stake without entangling ourselves in debate over whether such punishment is justified. We can experience the joy of a child's sudden recovery from illness without having to evaluate and choose among treatments. We can indulge in the thrill of an illicit love without worrying about the destiny of our souls. Sheltered from the repercussions of the emotions depicted, we can indulge in them with abandon, strengthening our capacity to understand what others think and feel. Ultimately, by observing how actions trigger emotions and emotions inspire actions in the novel, we learn how to control our own emotions, the better to direct the course of our lives. The fiction serves as a heady and gratifying but ultimately cautionary tale--one that delights and entertains, even as it teaches.

The perilous and precarious world of sixteenth century historical fiction will take readers from the heights of ecstasy and glory to the depths of cruelty and despair, acquainting them with envy, lust, indignation, hatred, fear, joy, courage, and love along the way. It leaves but a single emotion untried, the one readers are most eager to avoid: boredom.