Analyzing Fictional Sources
How do historians include sources of pure fiction in their research? We break down the ways that the fantastical can be a useful primary source below.
History most often relies on primary sources that are factual. These are sources like government documents, newspaper articles, or diary entries that at least claim to present facts about certain events. As we have discussed in other posts, these sources might not be entirely factual. Therefore, it is always the job of a historian to decide how much of a source to take at face value. However, these texts tend to report the facts of the past, so historians most often work with these kinds of sources.
Of course, not everything that is produced claims that it is telling the truth. In fact, many cultural productions intentionally do not represent anything that actually happened. Fiction books, for instance, take readers on invented stories, through settings that could range from historically accurate to completely imaginary. The same goes for films: while many films are based on historical events, many other films are completely designed from imagination.
So what should a historian do with this vast amount of cultural production that is designed as fictional? While the instinct might be to ignore this material and to instead focus on more factual sources, these fictional sources can actually be quite useful. In fact, ignoring fictional sources often means ignoring sources that can provide critical insights into what it was like to live in a particular time and place.
It doesn’t take long to realize that fictional stories are actually quite prominent in our lives. Think about what you interact with most in terms of contemporary primary sources. We all interact with popular culture—music, games, television shows, and films—far more than we read laws passed by Congress or updates from embassies overseas. That is not to say that we interact with no factual primary sources—we also encounter news articles and non-fiction books. But a large portion of how we interact with the wider is driven through these fictional sources.
But how do we use these sources? And what kind of information can they relay to us?
Historians typically use fictional primary sources in one of 3 ways:
First, historians use these sources as a way to understand the kinds of information, stories, and ideas that everyday people encountered. Popular culture is a tricky thing: it reflects the general interests of a time and at the same time encourages specific interests. For instance, consider the popularity of superhero movies in the past decade. Were superhero movies innately popular among the viewing audience and movie studios simply kept up with demand? Or did the fact that movie studios churned out so many superhero movies mean that audiences were then forced to see them? This question of causation is difficult to assess. What is easier to think about, however, is that the last few decades have been an era saturated with superhero films. For a person living in these times, this wider cultural phenomenon would have been hard to miss. This insight might lead to a historical question: how did the explosion of superhero films in the 21st century influence contemporary American society? In this sense, a historian might look less at the particular content within a fictional source and more use it as a way to understand what media people would have encountered in a specific historical era.
However, the content of fictional stories can also be useful to a historian. The second way that historians use these sources is to think carefully about the content itself. While stories might be fictional, their themes and attitudes likely speak to the time in which they were created. Why did the messages of popular books and films speak to such a wide audience? Why did audiences find stories about these particular characters compelling? Asking these questions about fictional sources can illuminate real insights into particular cultures. Especially, these sources are useful because they show attitudes that might not be stated directly in other sources.
The final way that historians use fictional sources is to see when and how fictional stories make direct connections to the real world. We have all likely read a book or seen a movie that has references to real events. What was the author or filmmaker trying to saying about these real events? And why did they choose fiction to address these actual events? Sometimes, authors and filmmakers can say things within a fictional story that they wouldn’t be able to say directly. This indirect mentioning of the real world especially occurs in countries where cultural productions are tightly controlled by the government.
Fictional sources, then, have a real place in historical scholarship. In one sense, they are more indirect than other kinds of primary sources that state directly what happened and why. At the same time, fictional sources help us understand the world in which people lived. And they also help us see glimpses into deep-seated social beliefs, which might not turn up in other primary sources.
