![]() It is less clear that other techniques, such as using accurate language from the time, actually work: people turn out not to be very good at recognizing anachronistic language.īut the actual way to fake a 19th-century novel, if Cloud Atlas is any guide, is much darker. It is perhaps self-evident that such appropriate settings and objects contribute to the creation of scenes that feel “truly” historical. ![]() Various types of objects-horse-drawn carriages, country mansions, workhouses-appear in 19th-century novels such objects, predictably, also appear in contemporary novels set in these times. ![]() And what the data reveals is far more surprising and unexpected than what I (or anyone else) has thought. But to get a more definitive answer, I took a quantitative approach. Over the years, scholars and lay readers have approached this question-how to convey pastness, in a way that the present accepts it as the past-from a number of angles. ![]() ![]() Novelists often write about the past, but how do particularly skilled novelists create a realistic and vivid impression of bygone eras? How do writers invent a vision of the past that rings true, at least with how we think about historical times today? Take a quirky recent book, Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, a genre-bending novel that spans six time periods, from the 19th century to the far-flung future: How does it manufacture its different pasts? ![]()
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