historical novel

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Genre of fictional prose narrative set in the past. Literature set in the historic rather than the immediate past has always abounded, but in the West, English writer Walter Scott began the modern tradition by setting imaginative romances of love, impersonation, and betrayal in a past based on known fact; his use of historical detail, and subsequent imitations of this technique by European writers, gave rise to the genre.

Some historical novels of the 19th century were overtly nationalistic, but most were merely novels set in the past to heighten melodrama while providing an informative framework; the genre was used by Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, French Victor Hugo, English Charles Dickens, and US writer James Fenimore Cooper, among many others. In the 20th century the historical novel also became concerned with exploring psychological states and the question of differences in outlook and mentality in past periods. Examples of this are English writer Robert Graves's novels about the Roman emperor I, Claudius and Claudius the God (both 1934), and French writer Marguerite Yourcenar's Les Mémoires d'Hadrien/Memoirs of Hadrian (1951).

Red and white are the national colours, derived from a 13th-century emblem bearing a white eagle on a red field. Effective date: 23 March 1956. >>