Humour and Historicals

PastMidnight said:

I enjoy writing humourous pieces, but can't seem to reconcile that with my writing of historicals. It seems that, barring the occasional witty character, historicals are dramatic and often quite serious. I remember thinking that the first half of Rose Tremain's Restoration was funny, but I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. I'm curious to see how other authors handle this, as I'd like to try incorporating humour into historical novel.

There are always funny scenes and funny characters, but can you think of historical novels that keep up this humour through the whole book? I'm sure there must be some, but just can't come up with them.

Any thoughts on this, as to why historicals tend to be so serious and dramatic? History is full of the absurd and the inane. Is there really no place for comedy in historical writing?

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The Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser is out-and-out humor. And certain sub-genres of historical romance (Regencies in particular) incorporate a lot of humor--I remember laughing out loud at a lot of Georgette Heyer.

Historical humor (non-fiction): Will Cuppy's The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody; also his devoted fan (rip-off artist) Richard Shenkman's Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History/American History.

Or go check out Blackadder on TV. Movies: Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Blazing Saddles.

Try reading...

Michael Pearce. His method of dealing with the really serious subject of being part of the English gov in Egypt when Nationalist terrorists chucked bombs is to use humour. It works and his books are funny and thought provoking.

Look for the Mamur Zapt series.

Georgette Heyer's Regency novels are really comedies of manners. That's why they are funny and have depth.

You could also go off the wall with some of Monty Python's extravaganzas.

Thanks for asking and answering this as I'd been wondering the same.

"The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." In my opinion, Shakespeare could have been talking about the serious issues of history versus the humorous ones. What do historians write down in record books - not the funny things rulers/powerful personages do. Puma

Add a little humour...

What do historians write down in record books - not the funny things rulers/powerful personages do.

Which is why we should have a go at writing about ordinary people and their lives and how they were affected by events. And humour would be superb to point out the old follies and help us stop repeating them. Especially if we could get some more children's historical writers of the calibre of Sutcliff, Treece, Wlliard and Welch. After all the 20thC was a disaster of repetitious wars and the same appalling mistakes repeated over and over by the so called super powers. Let's try and keep the 21stC more peaceful!

The Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis;

Elizabeth Peters' series about Amelia Peabody (Egyptian archeology )

I'm with you about writing about ordinary people, pdr. And when you get right down to it, it was the ordinary people who really created history. Generals might be given credit for winning battles, but they would have been nowhere without the ordinary people who did the fighting. Puma

Take a look at some of TC Boyle's historical novels such as RIVEN ROCK or THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE. They are books with ordinary people living in the shadows of historical figures (Stanley McCormick and John Harvey Kellogg respectively) with some hilarious moments. Of course, it's best to find darkly absurd and bizarre situations funny.

Many of his short stories are historically accurate and humorous as well.

Puma said:

I'm with you about writing about ordinary people, pdr. And when you get right down to it, it was the ordinary people who really created history. Generals might be given credit for winning battles, but they would have been nowhere without the ordinary people who did the fighting. Puma

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Of course, the ordinary people wouldn't have been doing the fighting if it wasn't for the general. Or would have fought, but lost.

Credit where due, and that. One can easily go overboard with some of these alternative views of history.

Actually...

I wasn't thinking about being alternative, Willowmound, so much as allowing readers, who are people, to look at the history they often learned from, say, a general's point of view, from a soldier's point of view.


So often history in school is about what happened. When you look at the event bottom up, instead of powerbase down, you can often see why things happened. That is interesting to readers and something a writer of historicals should bear in mind.

pdr said:

When you look at the event bottom up, instead of powerbase down, you can often see why things happened.

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I think that's a good point. I can see how it could be applied in other situations as well. For example, in my own work, say from a servant's perspective instead of the duke/duchess.

pdr said:

I wasn't thinking about being alternative, Willowmound, so much as allowing readers, who are people, to look at the history they often learned from, say, a general's point of view, from a soldier's point of view.

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Oh I definitely agree with that.

Leon Uris' Battle Cry mixes the two fantastically.

Seriously?

Must every thread turn into a rehash of the same actual vs. fictional / historically significant vs. insignificant debate?

So long as the story's well-written, well-paced, and compelling, who cares where the focus is? Some stories are best told through the eyes of those famous personages, others through the eyes of the anonymous "ordinary people" of history.

What really galls me is this...I don't know what to call it...I suppose disdain, perhaps...for the generals, etc. As though they sat back in the comfort of a tent and did nothing more than claim credit for this or that victory. Do the men on the ground deserve a lot of the credit? Hell yes, they do. But it's a marriage of good men to good leadership that wins victories, and history is full of examples where bad leadership has led very good armies to very tragic defeats.

And, of course, the same could be said for any large organization, from a business (I've seen firsthand what bad leadership can do to a great company in a very short span of time) to an army to a country.

On to Humor!

You know, this is actually something I've been considering with the new novel. It's a pretty bleak story (unjust exile and all that), but at a certain point there's that equilibrium shift where being exiled and living in isolation just becomes the norm...and I don't want my characters just being dour ALL. THE. TIME. I want them to adjust. I want them to cope and at times, yes, have fun.

I actually found my inspiration in a fairly unlikely place - The Deadliest Catch on Discovery. When you step back and think about it, the deck of a crab boat can be just as intense and exhausting as a battlefield. And on the show...nerves fray...tempers snap...some people break, others thrive...but above all they still have fun. They goad each other, they pull pranks on the other boats, give each other weird haircuts in a superstitious bid to find the crab. In short...it's a great place to witness the dynamics of human interaction in high-risk, high-pressure situations.

One can inject humor with both dialogue and situations. One probably should to lighten incessant drama or bleakness. I like to establish my MC as having a sense of humor and a secondary character as a wit.

Sabatini did it well in the opening sentence of Scaramouche: "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad."

Oh, god, Historical Humour - I am wondering about the same thing all the time!

Do get "The Walled Orchard" by Tom Holt. It is a masterpiece. He has a few other great historical humour novels but this, I think, is the best. It made me experience a brand new feeling I never knew existed. This novel is about the Athenian campaign in Syracuse, Sicily in 415-413 BC. He makes you revisit that disaster, the horror that befell the Athenians during the expedition, the confusion caused by the moonlight; and so you are terrified and you morn the loss of lives, but then you suddenly notice that you are unconsciously covering your mouth with your hands – because you are laughing, and you don’t want the soldiers in the book to hear you. That is what I felt, approximately.

If you are not interested in the Greeks, he has got one about the Romans. It is called “A Song for Nero.”

PastMidnight said:

Any ideas as to why you don't find more humour in historicals?

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My own naive guess would be because most historical books seem to be written on events that are generally seen as serious (wars, conflicts, royal troubles, famine, plague, disasters, etc.). When you look at events that have garnered the most attention in history, they always seem to be along these lines. Like with the news--the happy stuff doesn't draw as much attention as the bloodshed!

That isn't to say there isn't amusing stuff in history; there must be all kinds of things. Not usually on as large a scale as most historic events, but if somebody is creative they can work with it. More people just need to write about the funny things, is all. Think of it as opportunity.

This is one reason I write fiction based on Ojibwa mythology; nobody else seems to be doing it yet!

My way of injecting some humor is just wit. The WIP I'm working on now isn't very funny at all, but there are a few witty remarks. My other WIP, on the other hand, is way more light-hearted, mostly because the main character is absurd at times (on purpose!).

Humor is also tough in historical novels becuase, as much as people stay the same, there's a lot that changes from time period to time period. It's hard to figure out what would have been funny to, say, a person in 5th century BC Egypt.

The sense of humor doesn't necessarily translate, so it seems innapropriate to your setting or it doesn't seem funny to a modern reader.

Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog. OK, so it's got SciFi in it, too, but definitely historical.

Try Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. I wasn't sure if I should laugh at first, but it's hilarious.

A sense of humour is as subjective as everything else. What one person finds hilarious, others find a bore. But I certainly chuckled my way through the delights of Robert Harris' Imperium, which captured the dry wit of Cicero. Gorgeous stuff.

I do think it is essential to try to give a flavour of humour in historical writing. I enjoyed Manda Scott's Boudica series for the most part, but I did struggle to find any moment of humour in 4 x 400+ pages!