The Renaissance Historical Novel: Elizabethan and Jacobean Historical Fiction

The Renaissance Historical Novel

This project looked at historical fiction written in English in the sixteenth century. It resulted in my writing the book 'Renaissance Historical Fiction'. This deals with a range of different texts, but its key chapters discuss Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia'; the medieval fictions of Thomas Deloney; and Thomas Nashe's 'The Unfortunate Traveller'. My key argument is that the historical fictions of this period are fundamentally unlike their modern equivalents. Modern historical novels use history to explore questions of true and fiction, and to pose epistemological dilemmas; Renaissance historical fiction, by way of contrast, is dominated by the question of the use of history - is it profitable, is it moral, is it exemplary? If it is not, why is it not, and how is it not, and what does it do instead?