Tyler Has Words is the blog of Tyler Patrick Wood, a writer/musician from Texas. You'll get free book excerpts twice a week. On the other days, you'll get words. If you would like an original take on everything by an expert on nothing, this might be a cool place to hang out.

About Reading History in Fiction: Dickens

About Reading History in Fiction: Dickens

Post 511:

            Hopefully you want to know about the past. That’s pretty much all we’ve got to go on, except for just then.

            Great. Now that’s in the past.

            So I made a video that’s up on YouTube wherein I read an excerpt from A Tale of Two Cities. Thought it’d be something different to do, but it dawned on me that hearing a fictional, poetical account of history can draw me closer to the past than mere numbers and figures.

            In college, I had to memorize a lot of stuff as a history major, but we didn’t read fiction with historical mindsets. I think we missed out.

            Dickens lays out the madness of the French Revolution using every rhetorical device in his bag, but it gets you there. By that, I mean to say that he helps you to understand the situation that the people were facing.

            That’s educational. That’s emotional. That’s spiritual. That’s time travel, boys and girls.

            As a fan of time travel, I wholeheartedly endorse the reading of the classics. Yes, the arcane language can be a bit of a drag, but you’ll learn something about the way back. That’ll help. It’s good to sympathize with the people around you, but it’s an even neater trick to sympathize with those that came before.

            It was the best of times. It was the worst...things were alright…things sort of blew…I could run fast…I could run slow…It was a time of high speed internet…it was a time of dialup…

            We get it, Chuck. There were different sides to the coin.

            I shouldn’t tease. Dude had mad skills. But seriously. Enough with the thing.

            Check out the video that corresponds to this post on the TylerHasWords YouTube channel. About Reading History in Fiction: Dickens

            Cheers and see you after.

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