Remarkable Creatures Essay
The Remarkable Tale of Mary Anning: An Analysis of Remarkable Creatures and its
Merit as Historical Fiction Novels can do more that simply tell stories. Novels can enhance or emphasize thoughts and ideas. They can excite a wide variety of emotions. They can be the product of imagination, or they can be influenced by historical fact. Whether or not the events in a novel are true is left entirely up to the author, but it is truly an incredible feat to take a piece of history and turn it into a work of fiction that is plausible and logical. For our Senior Seminar, we have studied the aspects of fiction that have a basis in historical fact. They do so by applying certain literary devices that are necessary to the historical fiction genre. The novel I chose to research and present on is entitled Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Last Runaway. This work of historical fiction tells the story of Mary Anning, one of the first recognized female paleontologists whose discoveries changed many views on the world and how it began. Remarkable Creatures is a biographical novel, as it concentrates on the experiences that Mary Anning had during her lifetime, the people she meets, and the incidents that occur in her life. This essay will evaluate Chevalier’s work on the basis of its merit as historical fiction. Remarkable Creatures belongs in this category because it Chevalier implements the critical terms of the genre in numerous and intricate ways. I will use reliable secondary sources and class readings to promote the value of the text as historical fiction, and to analyze not only the text, but also the entire genre that the text represents. I will first begin with a brief description of the literary devices that form the critical framework of the historical fiction genre and how they are used in Remarkable Creatures. The first two elements are accessibility and the familiar. These two terms have an intertwined
Merit as Historical Fiction Novels can do more that simply tell stories. Novels can enhance or emphasize thoughts and ideas. They can excite a wide variety of emotions. They can be the product of imagination, or they can be influenced by historical fact. Whether or not the events in a novel are true is left entirely up to the author, but it is truly an incredible feat to take a piece of history and turn it into a work of fiction that is plausible and logical. For our Senior Seminar, we have studied the aspects of fiction that have a basis in historical fact. They do so by applying certain literary devices that are necessary to the historical fiction genre. The novel I chose to research and present on is entitled Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Last Runaway. This work of historical fiction tells the story of Mary Anning, one of the first recognized female paleontologists whose discoveries changed many views on the world and how it began. Remarkable Creatures is a biographical novel, as it concentrates on the experiences that Mary Anning had during her lifetime, the people she meets, and the incidents that occur in her life. This essay will evaluate Chevalier’s work on the basis of its merit as historical fiction. Remarkable Creatures belongs in this category because it Chevalier implements the critical terms of the genre in numerous and intricate ways. I will use reliable secondary sources and class readings to promote the value of the text as historical fiction, and to analyze not only the text, but also the entire genre that the text represents. I will first begin with a brief description of the literary devices that form the critical framework of the historical fiction genre and how they are used in Remarkable Creatures. The first two elements are accessibility and the familiar. These two terms have an intertwined
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