Methods of Knowing: Historical Research, Creative Writing, and the Past
From Natalie Zemon Davis in The Return of Martin Guerre and Alain Corbin in Life of an Unknown to Kiera Lindsey in The Convict’s Daughter and John Glavin in After Dickens: Reading, Adaptation, and Performance, a small number of scholars have proposed new ways of reading the past and writing social and cultural history, microhistory, biography, and literary criticism. In the final chapter of Victorian Honeymoons: Journeys to the Conjugal, the literary critic Helena Michie juxtaposes two modes of writing: a painstakingly annotated excerpt from a nineteenth-century woman’s diary and a fictional recreation of a moment in that woman’s life based on the record of events and experiences.