Fiction and History

Category: Humor in history

  • Where does Ozarks Literature begin?

    I’m humbled, really quite floored in that tomorrow at 11 a.m. I will stand in Strong Hall on the campus of Missouri State University in Springfield before students in a university course entitled Ozarks Literature and History, and taught by Dr. Brooks Blevins. Thirty students have just finished reading my novel, Morkan’s Quarry. While not…

  • Collective memory and the celebration of Saints

    [A] saint was commemorated on a liturgical feast day (and the most important might have several feast days, as did Saint Brees: in The Black and Gold Legend, Joachim de Marigny explains three such commemorations associated with Brees’s draftment, his captivity, and his ascension to Lombardi; these recall his being drafted to the National Football…

  • Confronted with the inexpressible

    Considering that within a few years of these scenes the first Jewish Rebellion breaks out, Roman historians might not have seen the humor in this. And it’s quite possible none of my Catholic brethren or fellow Christians will see any humor in it either. But I find the predicament of Porcius Festus quite funny faced…

  • Humor in history

    This can’t have been funny when Colonel Puchkov wrote it in 1760. And Elizabeth Roberts in her book Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro may not have thought it funny. But she’s pretty worldly and nuanced in this Cornell UP book. So, maybe she smiled. It’s Puchkov’s quote, delivered before a grim…